Mr. Danlami Umaru BASHARU
Chairperson,
Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
11, Johnson St., Onike, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria.
P.O. Box 52056, Falomo, Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria.
Email: duhkb@yahoo.com, crpd@ohchr.org

Cc: Ms. Rosemary Kayess, Vice Chair, r.kayess@unsw.edu.au

Dear Mr Basharu

Subject: Concluding Observations on  Australia and the UN CRPD, Sep-2019

Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, known as A4, observes that your Committee published its “Concluding Observations: UN Report on Australia’s Review of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD), 24 September 2019”. A4 greatly appreciates your efforts to hold Australia to its international obligations in relation to people with disabilities.

A4 is puzzled and disappointed that your Concluding Observations make no reference to autistic Australians. Excluding autistic Australians from your observations leaves them feeling that a crucial human rights body fails to recognise their needs and right.

Your Concluding Observations express various concerns relating to people with intellectual and psychosocial disability. Often, the same issues are equally relevant for autistic Australians, but autistic Australians were excluded/omitted completely from your observations. It feels as if autistic people just don’t exist, and as if A4 didn’t provide a submission to the Committee that explains autistic people a) are a major part of the disability community in Australia, and b) have numerous issues some of which are shared with other disability types (e.g. intellectual and psychosocial disability) and some relate specifically to autism.

Although growing rates of autism diagnoses are seen around the world, autistic people remain a marginalised section of people with disability. Surely, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has a responsibility to recognise and promote the needs and rights of autistic people along with those of other people with disabilities. Or is it OK somehow that autistic people continue to be neglected?