New Zealand’s role in promoting the Convention began well before the formal appointment of a New Zealand ambassador as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee. At a time when the great majority of governments were still doubting the need for a Convention, New Zealand included in its national New Zealand Disability Strategy a commitment to the idea of a Convention. New Zealand bodies also actively advocated for a Convention internationally, including the New Zealand Human Rights Commission participating in international forums such as Asia Pacific Forums of National Human Rights Institutions, in other regional meetings, and meetings of the International Co-ordinating Council of National Human Rights Institutions in Geneva.

The New Zealand Government therefore became one of the first United Nations Member States to promote the need for a Convention, publicly saying so at the first session of the Ad Hoc Committee. This commitment became prominent at the second session, where New Zealand made a proposal to establish a Working Group of the Ad Hoc Committee to prepare a first United Nations draft of the Convention for negotiation. The idea became known at the meeting as “the New Zealand proposal” and was widely seen as the best chance to make rapid progress towards securing a Convention.

The “New Zealand proposal” was also unique in that it secured seats at the Working Group table for organisations of persons with disabilities on the same basis as the States that were represented. While it was the first time such an arrangement had been proposed at the United Nations, it reflected New Zealand’s commitment to the “nothing about us without us” principle. While United Nations rules usually limit participation of non-government organisations (NGOs), New Zealand made it clear from the start that the participation of persons with disabilities and their organisations was a pre-requisite.

New Zealand’s more formal leadership of the process began in January 2004 with the appointment of the New Zealand Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York as Chair of the Working Group. New Zealand also contributed an expert member to the Group. The task at hand was a daunting one - the Working Group was allocated only ten working days to create a comprehensive draft Convention that covered the full spectrum of human rights.

In order to complete its work, the Working Group needed to work both during its formal meetings and in the evenings. Each draft article was drawn up by informal drafting groups working late into the evenings at the New Zealand Mission, with the assistance of any delegation and NGO that wished to participate, for distribution and discussion in the Working Group the following morning.

Against the expectations of many, and thanks to the hard work and dedication of all delegates, the Working Group completed its task in the allocated time and sent a draft Convention to the Ad Hoc Committee. New Zealand’s leadership of the Working Group was widely praised for its transparency, inclusiveness, efficiency and dedication to steering the process to a successful conclusion.

The success of the Working Group led to calls for the New Zealand Permanent Representative to co-ordinate the actual negotiations in the Ad Hoc Committee. The New Zealand Government agreed to the appointment, and made available dedicated resources to support the Permanent Representative in his role. The process was extremely resource intensive for New Zealand. Because of the high level of participation, and the need to encourage delegations towards the broadest acceptable positions without committing them (on the basis that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed), it was necessary to prepare updated draft texts supported by extremely detailed written commentaries, which were then presented to the Ad Hoc Committee as the outcome of the negotiations. All of this work was done behind the scenes by a highly committed New Zealand delegation (not by the United Nations Secretariat as many participants in fact assumed). It was instrumental in making rapid progress.

The New Zealand Permanent Representative was elected to take over as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee in April 2005 and, in the interests of continuity, the New Zealand Government subsequently agreed to his continuing in that role after the conclusion of his New York posting later that year.

With the completion of a second reading of the Working Group’s draft text, the Ad Hoc Committee agreed at the end of its Sixth Session (August 2005) to entrust the Chair with preparing a “Chair’s text” for a draft Convention, reflecting the discussion and conclusions to date. The New Zealand Government then ensured that the necessary time and resources were available for the preparation of this text and associated commentary, an intense process completed under considerable pressure of time.

Following a complete reading of the Chair’s text at the Seventh Session in January/February 2006, New Zealand urged participants to come to the Eighth Session in August 2006 with the objective of completing the negotiations. At that session, the New Zealand delegation again played a key role in bridging positions on the major outstanding issues (in a fitting re-enactment of the intense earlier processes in the Working Group, the final set of issues were resolved in informal consultations at the New Zealand Mission at four o’clock in the morning!).

The Ad Hoc Committee, under New Zealand leadership, then adopted the draft text of the Convention including an optional protocol, as a whole, without a vote, at the end of its Eighth Session. This outcome was reconfirmed when the Resumed Eighth Session on December 5th 2006 adopted the Convention and optional protocol, incorporating the work of the Drafting Committee (in which New Zealand had also participated actively), and a draft resolution that New Zealand had co-facilitated. Bringing this process to a successful conclusion at that meeting had required considerable work behind the scenes by the New Zealand Missions in New York and Geneva.

In addition to its commitment to resourcing strong expert-based delegations to assist the Chair throughout the process, the New Zealand Government was committed to making the process accessible. New Zealand modelled the approach of partnership with NGOs (of persons with disabilities) by ensuring that persons with disabilities, representing organisations of persons with disabilities were members of the New Zealand delegation; New Zealand consistently had two to four people from the NGO sector as part of its delegation throughout the process. As mentioned in an earlier section of this application, New Zealand provided funding for the Voluntary Fund (which financially assisted NGOs to attend Ad Hoc Committee meetings) and ongoing support for the NGO-produced daily summaries of the debate, which made available detailed summaries on the internet so disabled people could follow the discussions closely around the world. The Government also funded the production of an accessible easy-to-read version of the Working Group draft, and the production of the later Chair’s Text in Braille.

Finally, it should be noted that New Zealand’s leadership role in the Convention process was able to draw on the considerable synergies between what New Zealand was doing domestically, as outlined in the earlier sections of this application, and much of what was being proposed for the draft Convention. While the Convention sets a new high benchmark for all States, many of its central themes and its philosophy have been very much a part of the New Zealand approach domestically over recent years (and New Zealand was able to contribute draft wording to the Convention that reflected this).

New Zealand has therefore been able to take a “whole of Government” approach to promoting and developing the Convention, involving its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Office for Disability Issues, Human Rights Commission, Mental Health Commission, NGOs in the disability sector, and even the high political level, with regular reports on Convention negotiations to Ministers and even the New Zealand Cabinet.