Given a lack of US leadership in ratifying UN legislation to help 650 million people with disabilities, Ireland is punching well above its weight, writes Kevin Cullen.
After John F Kennedy was elected the first Irish Catholic president of the United States, the poet Robert Frost took him aside for some gentle advice. "Be more Irish than Harvard," Frost told him. Today, it is Harvard, America's oldest and most prestigious university, that is taking a leading role with some prominent Irish allies in trying to ensure a new United Nations treaty on people with disabilities is put into practice.
Last month, Harvard hosted an organisational meeting of human rights commissions from around the world. The delegation was led by the Human Rights Commission and its president, Dr Maurice Manning.
"The object of all this is to get human rights commissions collaborating on the implementation of the treaty around the world," said Gerard Quinn, a professor of law at the National University of Ireland Galway, who was on the UN committee that drafted the treaty.
In some ways, Harvard is trying to take on an organisational and lobbying role that would normally fall to the US State Department. But the US government has traditionally been wary of ceding power to international bodies. The Bush administration has been openly hostile to the UN and dismissive of other international agencies, including the International Criminal Court.
"The US State Department did not, unfortunately, take a very active role in the drafting of the treaty," said Quinn. Nor, say advocates, is the US taking a role in getting the treaty ratified and implemented so it can begin helping the 650 million people worldwide with disabilities, 400 million of whom live in developing countries.
The absence of American leadership on the UN treaty is especially frustrating to disability rights advocates because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is considered the gold standard legislation on the subject. There are about 40 such pieces of anti-discrimination legislation worldwide.
Ironically, Bush presides over official American indifference to a UN treaty which seeks to apply internationally a blanket of rights for the most vulnerable - rights that exist for Americans because of an act signed into law by his father in 1990.
Seeing a void, Harvard wants to provide American leadership on the issue. And so it has turned to the Irish. William Alford, the vice-dean of Harvard law school, said the Irish are disproportionately influential in the area of disability rights.
More than 100 states were involved in drafting the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Manning and Quinn worked the basement corridors of the UN building in New York during the climactic session.
Manning was chastened by the observations of Eric Rosenthal, of Washington-based Mental Disability Rights International, a human rights group that has exposed abuses worldwide. Rosenthal said the European Union lost an opportunity to force Romania to reduce the number of children living in orphanages. He said the 30,000 Romanian children who remain in institutions are being warehoused by well-meaning - but discriminatory - aid from the US and EU.
Quinn hopes the US will ratify the treaty soon, allowing its government lawyers to become involved in international efforts to get it implemented.
In the meantime, he believes Irish leadership on the issue is critical.
Kevin Cullen is a reporter for theBoston Globe and the newspaper's former Dublin bureau chief.