The Disability in Sport program at the Center for the Study of Sport in Society recently announced the formation of an International Disability in Sport Working Group. The group unites more than fourteen international organizations, including the center, in connection with the creation of the United Nations Treaty on the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Program director Eli Wolff facilitated the meeting and will participate on behalf of the center.

“We are thrilled to bring international organizations together to address the rights of people with disabilities in the context of sport,” says Wolff. “The time has come where we can openly and collaboratively address the needs of people with disabilities.”

The working group will develop a variety of initiatives to address the rights of people with disabilities in sport. Their primary goals are to promote the advancement of human rights for people with disabilities as they relate to sport; monitor the status of people with a disabilities’ right to sport in all regions of the world; develop and support research that enhances people with disabilities’ human right to sport; and develop and support sport and physical activity programs for people with disabilities.

Elise Roy, human rights legal advisor for Sport in Society, has spent more than two years working with the center’s Disability in Sports program to write an article on sport for inclusion in the U.N.’s Treaty.

“We have an amazing opportunity to use sport to change the way the world looks at people with disabilities,” says Roy. “The work the UN and the center are doing will ensure that people with disabilities throughout the world are afforded these important rights.”

Source: Northeastern University