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| J&K Disability Sector remembers Great Indian Disability Activist Javed Abidi | | 
On 4th March 2018 sad news came in the afternoon that Javed Abidi the disability Activist is no more. It was a big jolt to the Disability sector of our country. Javed was not an ordinary person but man with vision and mission.
Javed Abidi was the Director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), and the Global Chair, Disabled People International (DPI), a world body with special consultative status to the United Nations.
He passed away at around 1.30 pm on, 4th March 2018. He was young, at 53 and initial reports indicate that he succumbed to a chest infection. He is survived by his mother, a younger brother and younger sister.
Mr. Abidi was the pioneer of the cross-disability movement in India having founded the Disabled Rights Group in 1993 to work specifically on cross-disability issues. He was instrumental in setting up of National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) in 1996 and has been its Director since 1997. He is also the Convenor of the National Disability Network, India.
He was India's most respected voice in the disability sector, and the only leader with undeniable global reach and clout.
As an impassioned advocate of ‘Nothing About Us, Without Us’, he had given voice to an "invisible minority"- one that has been denied to them for decades, by catalyzing path breaking changes in the policy and legislative space. As the Global Chair of Disabled People’s International (DPI), for two terms, Mr. Abidi had successfully focused the world’s attention to needs of people with disabilities in the Global South. Under his leadership, DPI has hosted the first Global Forum on Disability, the first and only such initiative for voices so far unheard in the global disability movement. He had also been instrumental in promoting cross-disability civil society participation from the Global South at multi-lateral platforms such as the Conference of State Parties to the CRPD, among others. He set up the disability wing of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in India.
JAVED ABIDI(1965-2018)
Javed Abidi was born in 1965 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh and was diagnosed with spina bifida. Javed Abidi wasn't operated on for eight years, and suffered nerve damage as a result. At the age of ten, he injured himself in a fall and required another operation. After this, his family moved to the United States and Javed Abidi received care at the Boston Children's Hospital and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. At the age of fifteen he became a wheelchair-user. Javed Abidi, despite difficulties, studied at Wright State University, and in 1989, moved to India seeking a career in journalism.
In 1993, Mr Abidi started working for creating and building the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation's disability Unit. A year later, he joined a small advocate group called the Disability Rights Group and started raising awareness for the disabled people of India. A large pro-disability rights movement arose, with the goal of getting the Parliament of India to implement a bill of rights for the disabled. Javed Abidi led a protest before Parliament on 19 December 1995. The protest pushed Parliament into passing the Persons with Disabilities Act on 22 December 1995. In 2004, his letter to Chief Justice of India on making the polling booths accessible to persons with disabilities was converted into writ petition. Supreme Court of India then passed direction to make electoral process accessible.
The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation created the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People in 1995, and appointed Javed Abidi as its Director.
Javed Abidi worked with business executives from IBM, Apple Inc., Oracle Corporation, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard to employ disabled individuals in these companies and high tech industry in general. In 2000, Javed Abidi pressured the Archaeological Survey of India to install Wheelchair Ramps at the famous monuments the Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and Jantar Mantar in order to accommodate Stephen Hawking on his trip to them. For the next two years, Javed Abidi and the NCPEDP focused on accessibility for the disabled, publication of disability issues, and work opportunities for the disabled.
With him the disability movement in India and worldwide has lost a dedicated soldier.
He had successfully led several path breaking advocacy initiatives in India, including the drafting and enactment of the Disability Act of 1995, inclusion of disability as a separate category in the Census, India’s ratification of CRPD in 2007, and setting up of a separate Department of Disability Affairs. Most recently, he led the movement towards India’s new disability rights law – the Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.
He was instrumental in setting up of National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) in 1996 and has been its Director since 1997.
He was also the Global Chair of Disabled Peoples’ International, a position he has been re-elected to for the second time. In this capacity, he led and galvanised the voices of people with disabilities from the Global South.
Javed strongly believed that empowerment of persons with disabilities is connected to education, which in turn hinges on accessibility. And all three are not possible without enabling laws and policies.
Contributions of Javed Abidi:
Javed Abidi contributed as best advocate for passing Indian Disability Act -1995 Equal Opportunities, protection of Rights and Full participation. It was for the first time that disability act was passed in India after independence.
The important legislations like National Trust Act and Rehabilitation Council India Act were passed and Mr Abidi played an important role in passing Rights of persons with disabilities Act - 2016. He moved from post to pillar alingwith state disability leaders to motivate the opposition and ruling party parliamentarians to pass the Act for the empowerment of disable people in India. It was Javed Abidis personal efforts that gave boost to Country stakeholders to ratify the United Nations Convention on Rights of persons with disabilities in 2007.
There was no say about disable person census of India. In 2001 Javed Abidi took a great lead to include persons with disabilities for the first time for inclusion of persons with disabilities. In 2011 census Javed Abidi mobolised whole of Country disability leaders to sensitise stake holders to include the persons with disabilities in census and give disability a priortosing column.
Persons with disabilities were not given voting rights and were excluded due to barriers. Javed Abidi strongly voiced for electioneering rights of persons with disabilities and sued before Court of law. The Honourable Court gave the decision of providing ramps and provision of Braille facility on EVM's.
Javed Abidi was only leader in disability who formulated National Disability Network and worked on cross disability issues. National Disability network contain all types of representatives including Deaf, blind, orthopedic disable, Hemophilic affected, learning disable, rare disease disable, mental disabilities and leprosy cured.
Javed Abidi took over as chairperson of Disable people international and was reelected second time. It was his honest leadership which made him global leader in disability.
Javed Abidi will be always remembered as open minded leader in disability who took pains to translate UNCRPD and RPWD Act 2016 in most of the languages including Hindi and Urdu so that common masses could know the law at grass root level. In his last meeting with National committee members He said, "Every law is a piece of document and it has no power to move here and there for self implementation but every person with disability should take efforts to motivate stake holders to pass the rules and implement the law all around the country.
Javed Abidi was a selfless leader working 24×7 for disability rights. His vision was too broad and his priority areas were Employment, Education and accessibility for persons with disabilities. No other person can take his place and work on holistic approach Javed was working on.
Our tributes can be only to take his mission forward and plan to complete his mission he had framed for overall empowerment of persons with disabilities globally.
The best tribute to Javed Abidi is to carry forward his mission that is the complete empowerment of persons with disabilities towards independent living.
Javed Ahmad Tak
Disability Activist
[email protected]
9469064964, 7006139823
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