Alex RKFrom NZ, where I’m just finishing up teaching a fascinating (to me!) course on vulnerable adults rights protection at Auckland University, news of a project rather closer to home. The VOICES project that has been launched very recently by the Centre for Disability Law and Policy at the NUI Galway is – to my mind – a really important project in the ‘operationalisation’ of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (and to that end, I’m delighted to be on the project’s Steering Group).
Under the direction of Dr Eilionóir Flynn, the project’s aim is to explore the experiences of people with disabilities in exercising, or being denied, their legal capacity. The project will involve pairing people with a lived experience of disability with scholars, activists and policy makers who will provide critical legal, policy and social responses to those experiences and jointly develop concrete recommendations for reform. The project will involve participants from all over the world and the VOICES project encourages anyone interested in telling their story, writing a response or learning about new thinking on support to exercise legal capacity, to get involved.
For more information on the project, on how to get involved or to join the mailing list visit www.ercvoices.com or contact ercvoices@nuigalway.ie.
