Bizchut-June 2024 updates

A series of webinars: Women Beyond Disabilities ─

a discussion on sexuality and gender of women with disabilities in Israel With the goal of raising awareness of the topic of sound and protected sexuality of women with disabilities in Israel, as well as providing information and tools to these women, their parents, family members and professionals in this field, we initiated this series of webinars, “Women Beyond Disabilities.” This series created in collaboration with two organizations: Chimes Israel and the Negev’s Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Support Center (Maslan), took place in three parts during the months of March and April. Participants reported that the talks inspired them. To view the series (in Hebrew) Following a legal appeal in which we took part: The Supreme Court ordered that a solution is to be found for dealing with the long waiting time for mental health care   A first and significant step in the appeal on waiting times for mental health appointments which we joined: At the beginning of May the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Daphne Barak-Erez ruled that within a year at the latest, the Health Ministry and the HMOs must gather data on the waiting time for an intake appointment. A synopsis of the previous stages: the wait to set an initial appointment with a public psychologist has become unreasonable, extending to a year or longer and during the war has continued to rise. We joined in the appeal that was initially filed by the “Justice for Children” (organization calling for stricter sentences for child abuse in private preschools) together with the Israel National Council for the Child, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, and the Society for Patients’ Rights in Israel. In the appeal we claimed that the Health Ministry is unable to set a policy to deal with the problem of long waits for mental health care without having obtained precise data in a systematic manner, devided according to demographics and geographic regions. We requested the Health Ministry to develop a methodology allowing the collection of this data, on the basis of which the Ministry will make decisions about the manner of dealing with the problem. We are glad that the court has determined that the fact-gathering will take place in the coming year, a first step in setting policy to deal with the matter. To the full article in Walla (in Hebrew) Fighting for the rights of people with disabilities in the job market! This month we opposed the proposed law on rehabilitaltion (2023) that came up for discussion in the Knesset. The law’s aim is to permanently revoke employer-employee relationships in the job market relating to persons with disabilities whose earning capacity is under 20%.The law also adversely affects other protective rights. We in the Bizchut organization, jointly with the Rights of People with Disabilities Clinic at the Clinical Legal Education Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Law, contend unequivocally: the law creates blatant discrimination against persons with disabilities!! One of the postulations of the law is that persons with disabilities aren’t sufficiently productive to merit an appropriate wage, and if they want to receive such a wage they must meet the criteria and prove that they deserve it. This, while employees without disabilities wouldn’t be required to prove that their wages were fairly earned. The proposed law harms the person with disability’s rights to equality and justice, directly in conflict with Article 2 of the Law of Equal Rights for People with Disabilities and Article 27 of the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of which the State of Israel is a signatory. Additionally, the proposed law is based on meager data. The state’s contention that in order for employers to want to hire people with disabilities it would be necessary to revoke employee-employer relations, as an incentive for employers to hire them. In fact, the state has shown that only the smallest number of people with disabilities have been recognized as a person rehabilitating (that is, with employment capability of 19% or less) since the law was enacted. In effect, according to a report published in 2017: among 7000 diagnoses performed, only 163 persons with disabilities qualified for the status of rehabilitating. That is, this is the actual number to date of people who wanted to claim their due rights from their employer. So based on these small numbers, the state wants to establish a law permanently revoking rights to protect persons with disabilities in the job market?! If this weren’t enough, despite the law’s determining in 2007 that regulations should be set with clear criteria for examining earning capability ─ in reality no such guidelines have materialized. This is only part of the reasons for our stance that this proposed law is unacceptable.

Fighting for the right of due process for people with disabilities with an appointed legal guardian, making significant economic decisions Appointing a legal guardian for an individual, which revokes the latter’s legal status for decision-making, harms the person’s most fundamental rights: the right to legal autonomy, to liberty, to dignity and to property. The legislator wrote into the Law of Legal Competence and Guardianship structures of external inspection intended to ensure protection of the rights of people for whom a guardian has been appointed, while also preventing situations of conflicts of interest between the guardian and the person for whom the guardian is appointed. One of the significant mechanisms which the legislator chose to specify was the obligation imposed upon the guardian to obtain the court’s authorization before taking any action with distinct economic consequences. The draft law, published recently by the Ministry of Justice, proposes an amendment to the existing law establishing that in the majority of instances an administrative authorization issued by the Guardian General will be sufficient for the purpose of carrying out activities, and only in exceptional cases and at the Guardian General’s discretion will the court’s approval be required. According to explanatory material attached to the draft, the purpose of the proposed change is to ease the bureaucratic load on the legal guardians. While this is an important goal, we object to the far-reaching changes proposed in this draft law, due to our grave concern that giving the guardian an excess of liberty to act also in irreversible decision-making, without judicial oversight, will result in harming the rights of due process for persons for whom a guardian has been appointed.It also could harm the ability to defend their rights, includingmaking sure that appropriate weight is given to their wishes, as is obliged by law and the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.