What is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the response of the international community to the long history of discrimination, exclusion and dehumanization of persons with disabilities. It is historic and groundbreaking in many ways, being the fastest negotiated human rights treaty ever and the first of the twenty-first century.
The Convention is the result of three years of negotiations involving civil society, Governments, national human rights institutions and international organizations. After adopting the Convention in the United Nations General Assembly in December 2006, a record number of countries demonstrated their commitment to respecting the rights of persons with disabilities by signing the Convention and Optional Protocol when they opened for signature in March 2007.
The Convention is long overdue. It is over 25 years since the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons brought global attention to the issues affecting persons with disabilities.
The Convention ensures that the world’s largest minority enjoys the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. It covers the many areas where persons with disabilities have been discriminated against including access to justice; participation in political and public life; education; employment; freedom from torture, exploitation and violence, as well as freedom of movement.
The Convention recognizes that every person has equal “rights” and that the rights of each person should be respected by everyone. It helps to make sure that the laws and rules in a country fully protect the rights of persons with disabilities including children with disabilities.
The Convention marks a "paradigm shift" in attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. It takes to a new height the movement from viewing persons with disabilities as "objects" of charity, medical treatment and social protection towards viewing persons with disabilities as "subjects" with rights, who are capable of claiming those rights and making decisions for their lives based on their free and informed consent as well as being active members of society.
The Convention is intended as a human rights instrument with an explicit, social development dimension. It adopts a broad categorization of persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. It clarifies and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made for persons with disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced.
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