The UN has set up a committee of experts on disability rights to monitor what each country that has ratified the Convention is doing to put it into practice. Its actual title is the 'Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' but in this guide we will refer to it as the UN Disability Committee. In 2010 it had 12 members of whom nine were disabled people.
The UN Disability Committee:
- can make General Recommendations/General Comments that say how certain rights in the Convention should be interpreted, for example what steps they would expect States Parties to take
- monitors the compliance of a State Party with the Convention, and can make recommendations about what more the government should do to deliver disabled people’s human rights. The UK Government has to submit its first report to the UN Disability Committee in June 2011.
Some of the UN Disability Committee's powers come from a second agreement connected with the Convention called the 'Optional Protocol'. The UK Government has also ratified this.
You can read more about the UN Disability Committee’s work in Part 3.