The UNCRPD. What does it mean for you?
Read our guide for disabled people and organisations
Neil Crowther, our Disability Programmes Director, writes on the UN Convention on the rights of disabled people (UNCRPD).
In every aspect of life disabled people have the same rights as others. These rights are implicitly covered by other human rights treaties.
However, disabled people’s rights can often be ignored, so the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People explicitly states what these rights are. The Convention then sets out what governments should do to promote and protect these rights.
We apply the Convention in our work. For example, on Article 5, Equality and non discrimination, the Commission advises on and seeks to influence the development of equality and human rights law in Britain and Europe, promotes the law and good practice associated with it to those with rights and duties, enforces the law and intervenes in legal cases to develop and protect the law through the courts.
A guide has been published for disabled people and disabled people’s organisations and events have been held across the country (in Scotland in partnership with the Scottish Human Rights Commission) to raise awareness and to find out disabled people’s priorities in relation to the Convention.
At the moment we are focused on influencing the government’s report to UNCRPD Committee and producing a shadow report in 2011.
The Commission also chairs a working group of European National Human Rights Institutions to look at how we individually and collectively promote, protect and monitor implementation of the Convention in our own countries and at the level of the European Union.
The UNCRPD. What does it mean for you?
Read our guide for disabled people and organisations