The ASA Board of Directors recently approved a statement urging the U.S. Senate to ratify a United Nations convention clarifying the rights of persons with disabilities.

The ASA statement—adopted during the board’s summer meeting—reads as follows:

“The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the world’s largest community of statisticians, representing members in more than 90 countries and striving to ‘increase the contribution of statistics to human welfare without prejudice toward any person or group.’ It is with this objective in mind that the ASA supports the people with disabilities who engage in the profession or practice of statistics and the study of disability as a topic of research. Through activities of promoting the education of statistics in schools, increasing the public awareness of statistics, and supporting the use of statistics in making sound public policy, the ASA seeks to help make education, employment, and other opportunities available to all people regardless of disability status. The ASA Committee on Statistics and Disability, established in 1991, is tasked with advancing the study of disability within the field of statistics and promoting the study of statistics among people with disabilities.

“The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, provides a framework for nations to address the rights of persons with disabilities. The Convention recognizes that those with disabilities have the right to live independently, move freely, and participate in the community, and calls on nations to make education, healthcare, and employment available to all those who seek it. The Convention also explicitly calls on parties to ‘collect appropriate information, including statistical and research data, to enable them to formulate and implement policies’ to realize the rights listed.

“The United States played a key role in the development of the Convention, modeling it after the Americans with Disabilities Act, which already provides rights to more than 56 million people with disabilities. The majority of the world’s nations, representing about 1 billion people with disabilities, have become party to the Convention, sharing in the common purpose of providing dignity and equal opportunity to all people with disabilities.

“The ASA Board of Directors calls on the United States to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”