Call for presentations to be made at the Civil Society CRPD Forum on September 11th2012 Introduction The Civil Society

CRPD Forum (CSF) will be a full day event held on September 11 th, the day prior to the Conference of States Parties to the CRPD. The event, coordinated by IDA and its member organisations, is open to all other DPOs and NGOs committed to the implementation of the CRPD. Based on the feedback received during the consultation launched earlier this year, IDA has prepared the below structure of the programme. We would now like interested national, regional and global DPOs, NGOs, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) to express their interest in being speakers at this event. Expressions of interest IDA therefore hereby invites interested organisations to express their interest by sending us a one page concept note, providing a brief description of the topic to be addressed, the participation of DPOs in the relevant initiative, the main lessons learned and concrete advocacy proposals that are made. Please send this expression of interest by August 15th to the following email: crpd.csf2012@ida-secretariat.org. You will be sent a confirmation of receipt within 48 hours. If you dont receive it, please send your email again. We would also like organisations to indicate in which session they would like to participate, but we also kindly ask for some flexibility in this, as depending on demand we might suggest making the presentation at a different session. We foresee that all organisations willing to intervene will be able to do so, but reserve our right to limit this, in case the number of demands exceed the available time. Length of presentations Presentations will not exceed 5-7 minutes, in order to allow for other participants to raise questions (preferably in written form) to the speakers. Questions will be raised at the end of each session and a time of at least 15 minutes should be reserved for that. In order to facilitate the questions from other participants, we will be circulating the compilation of one-page concept notes to all participants prior to the event. It will also be available on the IDA and UN Enable websites. Advocacy focus of the 2012 Civil Society CRPD Forum IDA would like to ensure a clear advocacy focus of the 2012 Civil Society CRPD Forum. In particular, it will be important to use this event to collect proposals that could feed into the process towards the 2013 High Level Meeting on Disability and Development (HLMDD) To contribute to this, IDA will soon circulate a discussion document for the HLMDD which we would encourage participants at the Civil Society Forum to use as a background document to which to make concrete proposals of additions and amendments.

Accessibility of the event During the CSF, CART and international sign language will be provided. Entering the UN premises All persons willing to attend the Civil Society CRPD Forum will need to be registered to the Conference of States Parties. Please go to the UN Enable website to verify what needs to be done for this. While participating in the Civil Society CRPD Forum will be open to everybody, we would encourage all organisations and individuals that are planning to attend, to send us an email informing about this.

Draft programme 10:00-10:15 Opening by IDA Chair Yannis Vardakastanis 10:15-11:30 First session: CRPD related advocacy work at national level leading to change in legislation. 11:30-13:00 Second session: Examples of work with other stakeholders (media, National human rights institutions, business, trade unions, etc..) to promote the implementation of the CRPD. 15:00-16:15 Third session: Increasing the funding for the implementation of the CRPD: good examples of international co-operation, disability rights budgeting and others. 16:15-17:30 Fourth session: Examples of co-operation between UN agencies and DPOs/NGOs at national or global level to promote the implementation of the CRPD and/or examples of the use by national DPOs of UN mechanisms to provoke change at national level, including Universal Periodic Review, CRPD Committee and other UN Treaty Bodies. 17:30-18:00 Closing session chaired by Maryanne Diamond, President of the World Blind Union and member of the IDA Governing Body. Conclusions of the day by Javed Abidi, IDA Vice Chair.