Commissioner for Human Rights

A meeting of experts in the area of protection of rights of persons with disabilities from the Visegrad Group and Western Balkan states, co-organised by the Office of the Human Rights Defender and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, was held on 14-15th September 2015 at the premises of the Office of the Human Rights Defender. The foreign experts were received by Mr. Adam Bodnar, the Human Rights Defender, and Ms. Katarzyna Kacperczyk, the Undersecretary of State at the MFA. The participants of the seminar represented the national institutions dealing with human rights protection in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia.

In the course of the first day of the seminar the questions of the role of an independent mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and their best practices, as well as issues related to measuring practical implementation of the provisions and standards established by the CRPD were discussed. On the second day of the seminar the experts visited the head office of the Polish Association of the Deaf, where they were received by Ms. Kajetana Maciejska-Roczan, the President of the PAD, and took part in a moderated discussion devoted to the implementation of art. 24 of the CRPD providing for the application of bilingual education of deaf persons.