The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006 marked the end of a long journey by civil society.

For many years the international disability community had tried to persuade states that a new convention was required to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities. It was an uphill battle, but once states had finally accepted that proposition, we saw the development of a remarkable negotiating partnership between civil society and the member states of the United Nations.

As a result of that...

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force on 3 May 2008. It is the first human rights treaty to be adopted after the end of the Cold War; the first one to be adopted since the highly successful 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action that conference yielded; the first one to be drafted and adopted at the beginning of this century; and the first human rights convention to be open for signature to regional integration organizations. The establishments of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and...

The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marks a significant achievement for disability rights. This success is commonly attributed to the involvement of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in the drafting process at the United Nations. This chapter briefly recounts the history of the international disability rights movement—from individuals’ activism to the formation of an organized and powerful coalition. It describes two main challenges along the way: the dominance of the medical approach to disability and its alternatives as well as the complexities associated with defining what constitutes a disability along with...

“This Convention can’t just be about those of us here today. It has to be meaningful for the people who aren’t in the room; to my friends who aren’t always seen or heard by others because they don’t communicate in the same way as us here. It has to protect their rights and speak about their lives as well.” Robert Martin, a member of Inclusion International’s Council and a self-advocate from New Zealand, first spoke these words in the very early stages of work on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For people with intellectual disabilities and...

The right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community is central to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Yet this right was only incorporated into Article 19 at the last possible negotiating session in January 2006, as a result of extensive groundwork spanning one-and-a-half years and four negotiating sessions.

Why was this right almost left out, and why was it finally incorporated? What are the implications of this right for persons with disabilities, and what may we learn from the process that will aid in its implementation? This chapter explores these questions from the...

Securing the right to inclusive education for all in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities involved a struggle between perspectives on what it means to honor a human right to education for persons with disabilities. According to one perspective prevailing early in the negotiations, education for persons with disabilities should be about free choice between opportunities for learning, including specialized education in separate settings. However, another position became increasingly dominant and eventually prevailed: that inclusive education for all with specialist support in mainstream settings should be the core value underpinning education rights in the Convention.

This controversy...

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a historic achievement on many levels. Hard-fought and comprehensive, it promises to change the way the rights of persons with disabilities are understood and socially claimed by a broad range of stakeholders for generations to come. This is as true for the rights of persons with physical and sensory disabilities as it is for those with psychosocial, intellectual, and other developmental or learning disabilities.

It may be noted in this latter respect that a fairly high degree of confidence existed from the beginning of the negotiations that the final drafted...

Children with disabilities, like adults, experience widespread violation and neglect of their human rights. Despite the unique provision in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly includes disability as a ground for protection from discrimination, as well as a dedicated article introducing government obligations to ensure services for them, children with disabilities continue to face extreme forms of discrimination in most countries around the world. When children’s rights are considered, children with disabilities tend to be forgotten. When the rights of people with disabilities are considered, children with disabilities tend to be forgotten. Their rights, therefore, are...

Starting with the UN premise that of the world’s population of seven billion at least 15 percent have a disability, persons with disabilities make up the single largest marginalized social group. Considering that women constitute 51 percent of the world’s population, there are consequently at least 510 million women with disabilities around the globe. Despite this staggering figure, laws and policies accommodating the needs and desires of women with disabilities are largely nonexistent both at national and international levels. Regulations and policies that exist are frequently extremely limiting and often fragmented, which has often jeopardized meaningful practical application. Reflecting this...

The World Federation of the Deaf is an international, nongovernmental umbrella organization, comprising 133 national associations of deaf people and representing approximately 70 million deaf around the world. The philosophy of the WFD is one of equality, human rights, and respect for all people, with a focus on deaf people who use sign language and their friends and families.¹

Over the years, the WFD has witnessed discrimination against deaf people in all aspects of their lives. Most disheartening was the banning of sign languages in various countries and institutions and, as a consequence, the great weakening of the communication possibilities...

To be elected to the first committee to draft a text for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was a challenge and an honor for me. At that time I was secretary-general of the World Federation of the Deafblind, a small growing worldwide representative organization of persons with deafblindness. Later I was elected president. That election to the drafting committee happened in the fall of 2003, after the second Ad Hoc Committee session, where UN delegates discussed us, but almost without us. We, the Disabled People’s Organizations on the way to form the IDC, were permitted to...

Since the introduction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the UN has focused on treaties for groups requiring specific protection. The original Declaration did not address inequality for certain minority groups, including indigenous people and persons with disabilities. This lack of acknowledgment adds to the exclusion and marginalization these groups experience.

The negotiations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities partly overlapped with those concerning the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons. Although concluded simultaneously, UNDRIP had in fact been in negotiations for approximately sixteen years, while the CRPD had been in...

A central element in every democratic agenda in the twenty-first century is the sharing of power between the state and civil society. This mutual effort is, by the same token, a central element in the creation of sustainable development that incorporates a sense of respect for the citizens’ rights, points of view, and the principle of shared responsibility.

The active participation of members of civil society with disabilities was thus particularly important for the first UN convention on human rights in this century. Not only were we, as persons with disabilities, efficient and professional at discussing issues of critical relevance,...

The negotiation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol is a monumental achievement of intergenerational significance. In the course of the negotiation process, the social relations of disability fundamentally changed, not only at the international level, but also within individual nations, including Australia. Indeed, at least for a time, the centrifugal power relations that scatter the needs and concerns of persons with disabilities to the periphery of their societies and of international relations were reversed. In their place, the UN system and many governments adopted a new and democratizing ethic of partnership and...

The negotiations on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities coincided with a vibrant debate over the need for an overhaul of the reporting system to the so-called treaty bodies¹ and therewith the framework for monitoring the national implementation of international human rights obligations. Moreover, the Convention was set to be the first human rights treaty negotiated following the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, which not only sought to increase the national application of human rights dramatically but also emphasized the importance of establishing national human rights institutions. Additionally, the question of monitoring—not only at...

The negotiation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was a remarkable process. The extent of civil society participation—above all by persons with disabilities and Disabled People’s Organizations—and their insights and perspectives affected in fundamental ways both the style and structure of the negotiations and the form and content of its outcome, the CRPD and the Optional Protocol to the Convention.¹

The development of the Convention was notable also for the involvement of another group of actors—national human rights institutions and national disability institutions. This was the first time that these institutions had played...

This chapter summarizes the main observations and examines some of the theoretical aspects behind the work of civil society organizations at the United Nations, based on the work of such groups during the drafting process for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By doing so, it aims to address the questions posed in the introduction: What were the forces that enabled the drafting process to take place in such a speedy and comprehensive manner? How did the interaction between state delegates, nongovernmental organizations, national human rights institutions, and other experts in disability rights play out? What role...