Structured negotiation as a boost for disability rights (GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
Context:
- Structured negotiation is a collaborative and solution-driven dispute resolution technique which is increasingly being used as an alternative to litigation.
- It typically involves inviting the defaulting service provider to the negotiation table and impressing upon them the benefits of complying with social welfare legislations.
- While its utility pervades sectors, structured negotiation has been most effective in settling disability rights cases in the United States.
Applications:
- So far, structured negotiation has been successful in addressing the issues relating to inaccessible automated teller machines, point of sale devices, pedestrian signals and Service provider websites.
- It has convinced Walmart, CVS and Caremark to create accessible prescription bottles for blind or low vision customers.
- It has also been able to drive institutional reform by facilitating strategies for creating more accessible voting machines and websites.
Methodology of structured negotiation:
- Defaulting service providers want to avoid the high costs and negative publicity associated with litigation, while complainants want a barrier-free participation in the marketplace, both of which can be achieved through structured negotiation.
- This is not to dilute the role of the law and legal advocacy in securing the protection of rights of marginalised populations.
- Indeed, a key factor upon which the success of structured negotiation depends is the creation of a strong body of disabled-friendly legal precedents that create a robust foundation for structured negotiation to take place.
- Once courts are able to create a blueprint for what accessibility and compliance with the law in a given sector looks like, structured negotiation emerges as a pathway for businesses to ensure that they are able to make their offerings accessible without having to go through the rigmarole of litigation and for users with disabilities to obtain a disabled-friendly offering without the cost and unpleasantness associated with litigation.
CCPD:
- As it is, the increasing pendency, paperwork and red tape in Indian civil courts are already dissuading parties from using traditional dispute resolution methods.
- India’s flagship disability legislation, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 provides that any non-compliance with its provisions may be reported to the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (‘CCPD’).
- The CCPD then puts the defaulting service provider on notice, and may then either direct them to make their services accessible or impose penalties on them for non-compliance.
- While the creation of a designated body for handling cases on disability rights has been a positive measure, its actual impact on repairing accessibility barriers in the marketplace remains to be seen.
Potential of Structured Negotiation technique:
- The CCPD recently directed PayTM, a digital payments application to make its mobile applications accessible for Persons with Disabilities.
- In complying with the order, the PayTM application ultimately became more inaccessible.
- This incident demonstrates that any attempt to make digital services accessible for persons with disabilities in real time requires constant vigilance and user inputs which can validate the efficacy of solutions.
- This is where the potential of a Structured Negotiation technique can be utilised. On one hand, it can allow service providers such as PayTM to avoid the embarrassment of being labelled as non-compliant.
- It can also help them avoid hefty legal fees and prevent their officials from being tied up in paperwork before courts for days.
- On the other hand, it can enable Persons with Disabilities to take their concerns directly to the service providers and monitor the fixes as they get implemented.
Way Forward:
- However, the success of any alternative dispute resolution model is directly proportional to the level of priority that such service providers are willing to afford to the struggles of persons with disabilities.
- Till the time such providers continue to feel that there are no real benefits of providing any services to persons with disabilities, any attempts to settle these claims amicably outside courts would be a tall order to achieve.
- It is high time that businesses prioritised the needs of disabled users, and exhibiting openness to enter into a structured negotiation would be a powerful step in this direction.
African raptor population declines 88 percent in 40 years, many crossing IUCN threshold: Report
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- Raptors in Africa have experienced a widespread decline of about 88 per cent in the past 40 years, a new study revealed.
Risk of global extinction:
- Scientists said that 37 of the 42 species examined by them have seen a decline in their population. Out of the total, 29 (69 per cent) have seen a drop in population over three generation lengths.
- The generation length criteria is used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to identify species which are at the risk of global extinction.
- Two-third of the studied population from 1969-1995 and 2000-2020 across Africa show strong evidence to be globally threatened.
Key Highlights:
- The researchers studying 27 species in multiple regions of Africa found that 24 of them (89 per cent) exceeded the decline threshold.
- As many as 13 of these species are enlisted in the Least Concern category, raising the issue of reassessing their status.
- Six of the species that is secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius), lappet-faced vulture (Torgos tracheliotos), bateleur, tawny eagle (Aquila rapax), steppe eagle (A nipalensis) and martial eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) are endemic or near endemic to Africa who have declined rapidly than the threshold rates, a method used by IUCN to define threat status.
- Three additional species showing steep declines are augur buzzard (Buteo augur), Dickinson’s kestrel (Falco dickinsoni) and Beaudouin’s snake-eagle (Circaetus beaudouini).
- The latter is of particular concern, having declined by 80-85 per cent over three generation lengths within a large (and probably representative) portion of its global breeding range.
Threats:
- The raptors are seeing rapid decline in population owing to loss of habitat, loss of prey-base and anthropogenic disturbances.
- The study stated that the human population in the continent has increased rapidly over the past 60 years leading to high expansion of land conversion and habitat degradation, threatening the raptors.
- Annually, nearly five million hectares of forest and non-forest natural vegetation was lost in sub-Saharan Africa. The declines were more prominent in West Africa where the situation was worse than sub-Saharan Africa.
- Corruption, regional levels of poverty, lack of funding and mismanagement led to adverse effects on conservation of species in protected areas of west and central Africa.
- Moreover, the rate of agricultural expansion was recorded to be three time more in the West Africa compared with the rest of Africa between 1970s and 2000s.
- The combined effect has resulted birds of prey increasingly relying on Protected Areas (PA), which amount to 14 per cent of the land. The study warns that if the trend continues, the pressure on PAs will increased.
- Apart from loss of habitat other threats of concern to the avian apex predators, scavengers and miso-predators include prey-base depletion, unintentional poisoning, killing by poisoning, shooting, trapping, electrocution and collisions with human built energy infrastructure.
- They said that raptors which breed slow also face difficult in recovering the rapidly lost population.
Significance of raptors:
- It observed that depletion in predator population can trigger cascading effects on its prey populations and disrupt the ecosystem functioning.
- Raptors provide crucial ecosystem services such as rapid removal of carcasses through consumption and decreasing the risks of spread of zoonotic diseases to human populations.
- The analysis of African raptors seeing stepper annual declines compared to smaller species reflect pattern of extinction risks observed similar to terrestrial mammalian predators.
- The risks to large bodied species multiply due to biological traits such as low population density, low annual fecundity and delayed maturity.
