Prepared by the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities.

Monitoring of citizens’ appeals.
Period: September 2012
About 56 appeals were received from September 1 till September 31 2012 by the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities.
35 appeals were taken for further more detailed consideration by the Office’s lawyers.

In February 2012 Khaletskiy Anatoliy Petrovich, 3^rd group disabled diagnosed on April 30 2010, appealed to the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities.

Khaletskiy told that on August 15, 2011 he was hired to closed corporation “Avtozavodskoi” as a controller of 4^th class, he signed one year contract. On February 2, 2012 he was fired on the basis of p.2 art 42 of the Labour Code of the Republic of Belarus – noncompliance of an employee with the job due to the state of his health, preventing him from continuing to do the work.

On September 21, the second hearing of the case “On compulsion to bring the house in accordance with the construction norms and creation of barrier-free environment” took place in Pervomaiskiy district court of Minsk.

At the hearing the defendant agreed with some of the claimant’s demands: the absence of a ramp at the entrance to the premises of the partnership of owners of housing and the height of thresholds on the way to elevator that were constructed not in accordance with the construction norms. The defendant refused to admit 10 mln rubbles moral damage compensation demands of the claimant. “We consider that the claimant’s demands of compensation for moral damage do not correspond with the violations of his rights and his moral damages”, - said the defendant’s representative. The judge offered him to imaging as if he is Pavlovskiy and try to estimate moral damage.

“The main problem is that a person with disability doesn’t know his rights”. – This statement sounded at the presentation of annual Monitoring of citizens’ appeals to the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities.

“Office for the rights of persons with disabilities has been working for a year. During this time we received 1431 appeals, 863 of them were taken for further more detailed consideration. The majority of appeals were from Minsk – 509, 354 were from regions” – told the coordinator of the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities Sergey Drozdovskiy.

Philippines and Spain, co-facilitators of the 2013 General Assembly High-level Meeting on Disability and Development, will convene two initial informal meetings to be held on 10 September, from 3 to 6 p.m., in the ECOSOC Chamber; and on 14 September, from 3 to 6 p.m., in Conference Room 4 (NLB). The meetings will provide an opportunity for an open exchange by all stakeholders for the High-level Meeting and its outcome, and are open to civil society representatives with UN grounds passes.

Preliminary hearing of the case took place at Pervomaiskiy district court of Minsk “On compulsion to bring the house in accordance with the construction norms and creation of barrier-free environment”. The claimant is Richard Pavlovskiy, wheelchair-bound disabled. Defendant – developer “BelInte-Roba”. The essence of the case is the following: Richard Pavlovskiy signed an agreement with “BelInte-Roba” “for constructing apartment in block of apartments in Minsk, Masherova av. 43. The construction was finished in December 2010 (claimant’s statement of claim)”.

For the first time in Belarus court found state owned organization (Bobruisk unitary communal branch road maintaining enterprise) guilty of violating the norms of barrier-free environment. Wheelchair bound disabled who got injured in the result of the accident got compensation for moral damage. Direct connection between the violation of barrier-free environment norms and the violation of the rights of persons with disability was found.

The Kaspirovichs, a family of a serviceman, have a daughter Karina, who is a disabled with the 4th degree of health loss. The norms of barrier-free environment were not observed in the house where they live – there were no ramp or special lift for disabled. That is why Karina had lots of problems: she couldn’t spend time at fresh air, communicate with other children or simply go out of the apartment. 

In June 2012 the Office for the rights of persons with disabilities has started to realize a new project “Monitoring of barrier-free environment”. The project is aimed at the creation of the instrument of monitoring barrier-free environment and its usage. In the frames of the project the coalition “Accessibility” and invited experts will hold the analyses of existing barrier-free environment monitoring instruments; prepare “Guide to holding monitoring of barrier-free environment”; test the monitoring instrument; present the results of the project to the public.