Akiko Ito

Summary

In more than three decades of service for the United Nations, I have been advancing the human rights of the disadvantaged and their full and effective participation in economic and social development, with a focus on the rights, well-being and perspectives of the marginalized groups across the three pillars of the United Nations: human rights, development and peace and security.

At the United Nations Secretariat, I have been in charge of supporting the intergovernmental processes of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and its Commission on Social Development. From 1994-2001, I focused on building a new UN global programme on disability, following its relocation from the Centre for Social and Humanitarian Affairs at Vienna to New York in 1993. During that phase, my objective was to strengthen the disability-inclusion in the international normative and operational frameworks of the United Nations and to mainstream disability as a global issue in the work of the United Nations system.

Throughout the negotiation of a first-ever international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (adopted as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006) from 2001-2006, I provided both substantive and technical support for the treaty process, coordinating the work of the Bureau, Member States and the UN system, based on the contributions from academic communities and civil society.

Furthermore I built a foundation for an institutional mechanism for the implementation of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities as a new form of a Conference of states parties to a human rights treaty. Unlike no other human rights treaties, the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has a unique official programme to exchange ideas and experiences in implementation of the Convention in the context of the global agenda.

Following the adoption of the Convention and the establishment of its Conference of States Parties, I led the Secretariat’s work for the preparatory meetings, regional consultations and the negotiation processes for the General Assembly High Level Meeting on the Realization of the MDGs and Other Internationally Agreed Development Goals for Persons with Disabilities (2013) and its follow ups by the Assembly. It resulted in the outcome document, which provided a basis for the integration of the disability inclusion in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals.

In the area of capacity-development and technical cooperation, my initiatives led to developing the tools for implementing the Convention and mainstreaming disability in the UN operational frameworks. As the chair of the IASG-UNDG task force on disability, I played a principal role to conceptualize, design and coordinate the work on a first “Guidance Note on “Integrating disability in the UN operational framework.”

In response to the call by the Assembly for an evidence-based research concerning the situation of persons with disabilities in society and development, I initiated a first-ever UN flagship report on disability and development, based on the concept developed with the UN DESA Statistics Division and other statistical offices within the UN system during the past decade. The report provided an overview of available data and statistics concerning the situation of persons with disabilities in the context of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its monitoring and evaluation.

As a co-chair of the UN Inter-Agency Support group on disability and the UN Inter-departmental task force on disability, as the lead of my Department, I took charge of the process of the roll-out of the UN Secretary- General’s Executive Committee Decision on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (2018), in collaboration with other UN agencies, the mandate-holders, special representatives and civil society networks.

More recently, I initiated a project on the global knowledge platform on disability and the global agenda with the Executive Office of the Secretary-General and the members of the UN Inter-Agency Support Group on Disability. This project had a view to building an inclusive and accessible knowledge base for Member States, UN system, academic institutions, civil society and the private sector for their action on the disability inclusion in the COVID-19 crisis, recovery and building back better toward an inclusive, accessible and sustainable world.

I have also served as the Chair of the Executive Board of the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD), a United Nations multi-donor fund to advance the status of persons with disabilities on the ground, which I was a main architect and one of the founders.

I have taught and lectured at a number of academic institutions and research institutes, including Yale University, University of Southern California, University of California at Berkeley, University of Tokyo, Ritsumeikan University and Ehwa Womans University, among others. I designed and implemented a number of interdisciplinary projects on the disadvantaged groups and the global agenda, including with the above-mentioned academic institutions and relevant UN offices through a series of seminars, projects, conferences and research collaborations.