Participatory Justice, the UN Disability Human Rights Convention and the Right to Participate in Sport, Recreation and Play

Abstract:     
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, or the Convention), together with its Optional Protocol, imparts a human rights framework that engages the full spectrum of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. By so doing, the CRPD aims at remedying the systemic deprivation experienced by persons with disabilities throughout the world and seeks to make a reality the concept of participatory justice. Accordingly, the Convention recognizes that “individuals cannot flourish without their joining with other humans in some sort of collective activities” and acknowledges that “nothing could be more essential to personality, social existence, economic opportunity - in short, to individual well-being and integration into the life of the community - than the physical capacity, the public approval, and the legal right to be abroad in the land.”

This chapter briefly recounts the detrimental exclusion of persons with disabilities from the social right to sport, recreation, leisure and play (SRLP) in human rights practice, provides an analysis of the content of CRPD Article 30(5) equal participation rights, and discusses the implications of SRLP rights for the expressive and socializing affects of the Convention.

Further to publisher request only an abstract is furnished.

Keywords: disability, social rights, economic and social rights, particiaptory justice, united nations, human rights

working papers series