A/HRC/43/27 common benefit for mothers and their children can increase the impact of awareness-raising and the realization of rights for both.17 46. Awareness-raising campaigns must directly address the realities and rights of persons with disabilities if they are to be considered as measures to implement article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Some countries dedicate disability-specific funds to support campaigns to prevent traffic accidents, to develop HIV/AIDS campaigns or to reduce gun violence. Equally, when reporting on awarenessraising campaigns for persons with disabilities, some States mention campaigns to prevent illnesses and conditions affecting vision and hearing, and health conditions that might affect mobility or other primary health conditions. While these campaigns should be inclusive of persons with disabilities, they do not only target such persons. Since they target the general population, they should not be considered as disability-specific measures under article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Usually, funding for disabilityspecific actions is limited and redirecting funds from this source to fund general campaigns has a disproportionate impact on the disability budget without providing a similar benefit to persons with disabilities themselves. C. Changing attitudes 47. Awareness-raising programmes should go beyond providing information about rights and focus on changing negative attitudes that operate as barriers to the participation of persons with disabilities. While being aware of rights is essential, particularly for the person concerned, a general awareness of rights can have negative or masking effects. Social desirability bias, that is the tendency of individuals to report on their attitudes in a manner that is socially acceptable, is a common consequence of awareness-raising programmes that are only designed to provide information about rights. Studies show that persons with and without impairments progressively increase their societal perspectives on other persons with disabilities, for example, recognizing their right to work, to education, to social protection or to health. Nevertheless, when assessed from an individual perspective using subtle assessment tools, negative attitudes reappear. Monitoring attitudes towards persons with disabilities should include subtle assessment tools to avoid false positives. 18 48. Negative attitudes towards persons with disabilities stem from a social construction of what is normal (body, form of communication, functionality) and what is not. This normalcy implies that there are those whom are considered “normal” and “others” whom are not. “Normalcy” and “otherness”, as general categories, support an explanation of how the impairment of a person influences the role given to that person by society. Impairment is perceived in different dimensions: an objective dimension in which the impairment “is”, as a personal characteristic, without further qualification; a subjective dimension, in which persons may value their impairments, may give it no particular value, may give it a negative value, may embrace it as part of their identity and/or may consider it as a health condition that requires attention, among others; and a social dimension, in which society acts upon the lived experience of the impairment, misrepresenting it and giving it a negative value. The objective and subjective dimensions are not the domain of awareness-raising programmes, while the attitudes constructed in the social dimension are, as they can be changed and replaced by a positive representation. 49. Attitudes towards persons with disabilities are complex, so interventions designed to change them must be wide-ranging. It is largely recognized that attitudes change positively, at a faster pace and are more durable when interpersonal relations and affective ties are generated. Hence, the importance of the direct involvement of persons with disabilities in awareness-raising programmes to change attitudes towards such persons. Direct contact with persons with disabilities is key in giving a human dimension to the lived experiences of the persons concerned and supports the correction of misrepresentations and stereotypes. 17 18 10 A/HRC/28/37, para. 36; and general comment No. 3, para. 17 (c). Mark Deal, “Attitudes of disabled people towards other disabled people and impairment groups”, unpublished doctoral thesis, City, University of London, 2006, pp. 316–318.