Equality and Human Rights Commission

The Convention says that disabled people and their organisations should be involved in the monitoring of the Convention (Article 33).  This section sets out how you can be involved – in particular through writing ‘shadow reports’. These are reports that organisations can send in to the UN Disability Committee to say what progress the government has made (or not) on the implementation of the Convention.

You can also use the same approach for ‘informal reporting’ – for example, you could write a report about human rights of local disabled people, and use that to influence local policies and services. Or you could write a national report about, say, further and higher education and use the rights in the Convention to show whether human rights of disabled students are respected.

This section contains information on the following topics:

• Background information: monitoring and reporting
• You have the right to be involved in monitoring
• Getting involved
• Shadow reports

Background information: monitoring and reporting

The UN Disability Committee is a committee of 12 experts set up to monitor what governments who have ratified the Convention are doing to implement it. The UN Disability Committee has a powerful role in holding governments to account. Although they cannot force a government to implement their recommendations, governments don’t want to lose their good reputation, and will often follow up the recommendations. The fact that countries know their track record on disabled people’s human rights will be held up for international scrutiny and publicity at regular intervals helps them focus on delivering real action.

In June 2011 and every four years thereafter the UK must report to the UN Disability Committee. National Human Rights Institutions, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and voluntary organisations can submit ‘shadow’ reports. These are also called ‘alternative’ or ‘parallel’ reports – in this guide we use the term ‘shadow reports’.

The UN Disability Committee takes a close look at government reports alongside shadow reports. They assess whether governments are meeting their obligations under the Convention. For this they rely heavily on the shadow reports.

After looking at all the evidence and questioning ministers they will issue their ‘Concluding Observations’. These set out specific recommendations for government action.

Shadow reports are an important tool which disabled people can use to flag up where progress has been made or where disabled people’s human rights are not yet secure. This section sets out the report process and tells you how you can get involved, both in the government report and in the shadow reports – or even write one yourself.

Case study: How reporting can make a difference

The Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) is a small voluntary organisation which monitors human rights in Northern Ireland. In the 1990s it wanted to end human rights abuses against people detained in custody on suspicion of being involved in paramilitary violence. These people were being interviewed without lawyers present, locked up without a fair hearing and subjected to physical ill-treatment. 

It used the reporting process under the Convention Against Torture to achieve this goal. This process helped them generate publicity and put pressure on UK Government.  When the UK Government appeared before the Committee Against Torture in 1991, 1995 and 1998, CAJ made detailed, high quality submissions and attended the Committee meetings to brief members on each occasion.

Paul Mageean of CAJ says ‘Almost all of the recommendations the Committee has made over the course of those years concerning Northern Ireland can be traced directly to the submissions we made.  The key specific objectives and the overall goal have been achieved. It is our view that the use of this tactic had a considerable impact in changing the way the UK, and particularly the police in Northern Ireland, operated in relation to the detention of those suspected of being involved in paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland.’

When the government writes its first report to the UN Disability Committee it must tell them:

• Whether – and to what extent – disabled people actually enjoy each right in the Convention in practice (with statistics broken down according to sex, age, type of impairment, ethnic origin and other categories).
• What policies, strategies and laws they have put in place to ensure each Convention right becomes a reality. They should say what resources have been identified to support this and what progress has been made.
• Whether it has adopted comprehensive disability anti-discrimination legislation.
• What systems are in place to monitor progress towards ensuring each Convention right becomes a reality for disabled people including details of how progress will be measured.
• How each Convention right is protected in law in the UK and details of any laws which exclude or single out disabled people for worse treatment.
• How disabled people can get justice if their Convention rights have been violated.
• Whether there are any barriers beyond their control which are making it difficult to make the Convention rights a reality, including details of what steps are being taken to overcome them.