The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Process, Substance, and Prospects

Abstract

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, or Convention) along with its Optional Protocol by general consensus on December 13, 2006. The CRPD opened for signature by States Parties on March 30, 2007, has been signed by more than one hundred and twenty five States. Ratified by twenty States Parties, the Convention is entering into force, with State Parties establishing a treaty monitoring body (Committee) whose jurisprudence will bind States that have ratified the Optional Protocol. The CRPD is the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century, as well as the first legally enforceable United Nations instrument specifically directed at the rights of persons with disabilities.

This chapter overviews the Convention’s adoption, summarizes its substantive content, and assesses its future prospects for bettering the lives of the world’s six hundred and fifty million persons with disabilities. Although the CRPD has a remarkably broad transformative potential, we will focus on three areas we feel are most likely to yield immediate results.

Further to publisher request only an abstract is furnished.

Keywords: disability, human rights, treaties, united nations, development, expressive law