WASHINGTON: US Senate on Tuesday failed to ratify the UN convention protecting the rights of the disabled, a treaty whose approval would create no change in US law but encountered Republican resistance.
Lawmakers voted 61-38 in favor of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.
President Barack Obama's signature would have made the United States the 127th country to ratify the convention, which was first adopted December 13, 2006 by the UN General Assembly.
The treaty was largely symbolic for the United States in that it codifies in international law many of the rights already afforded under the Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA), the historic US law passed in 1990.
In recent months, Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the treaty, suggesting it would infringe on US sovereignty or allow the state to dictate the actions of families with children with disabilities.
Senator Jon Kyl, a retiring Republican, said he objected to the "disability diplomacy" that was on show with the treaty, saying there was no need for the country with the world's best record on disability rights to sign a pact that made no changes to US law and was "not enforceable" in any event.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, told AFP "of course" he was disappointed in the vote.
Minutes earlier on the Senate floor he sought to convince wavering Republicans that the treaty would have no legal effect on the United States.
"It doesn't require any changes to American law, zero," Kerry said.
"This has no tying of the hands of America, there isn't one law of the United States that would be negatively affected."
Instead, he added, "it will push, it will leverage, it will require other countries by their commitments to be held accountable to the standards that we have set, and take our gold standard and extend it to the rest of the world."
The presence in the chamber of former senator Bob Dole, the disfigured World War II veteran and 1996 Republican presidential nominee who helped negotiate the ADA, was not enough to overcome Republican opposition.
Many Republicans including Senator John McCain, who voted in favor of the treaty, approached Dole to wish him well. Others waited until Dole, 89, was led out of the chamber before casting their 'no' votes.
Congressman Steny Hoyer, a House Democrat who helped pass the original ADA in 1990, said he was "extremely disappointed that Senate Republicans blocked" the treaty, and urged the lawmakers to allow ratification at a later date.
Rights groups swiftly expressed their disappointment as well.
"US leadership has been influential in putting disability rights issues on the international agenda, but the Senate vote is a big step backward," said Antonio Ginatta, US advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.
Ratification, he said, would have "provided the framework to advance and promote the rights of people with disabilities globally."
Handicap International US sees the treaty as a "moral impetus" that ensures nations are appropriately including persons with disabilities in society.
But instead of helping eradicate the exclusion that many with disabilities suffer abroad, "the US sent a message of exclusion to the world," said executive director Elizabeth MacNairn.
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