Disability And Human Rights

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Disability Human Rights Law" that was published in Laws

This book examines the changing relationship between disability and the law, addressing the intersection of human rights principles, human rights law, domestic law and the experience of people with disabilities. Drawn from the global experience of scholars and activists in a number of jurisdictions and legal systems, the core human rights principles of dignity, equality and inclusion and participation are analyzed within a framework of critical disability legal scholarship.

The Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to disability and provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of the main issues in the field around the world today. Adopting an international perspective and consisting entirely of newly commissioned chapters arranged thematically, it surveys the state of the discipline, examining emerging and cutting edge areas as well as core areas of contention. Divided in five sections, this comprehensive handbook covers: different models and approaches to disability how key impairment groups have engaged with disability studies and the writings within the discipline policy and legislation responses to disability studies and to disability activism disability studies and its interaction with other disciplines, such as history, philosophy and science and technology studies disability studies and different life experiences, examining how disability and disability studies intersects with ethnicity, sexuality, gender, childhood and ageing. Containing chapters from an international selection of leading scholars, this authoritative handbook is an invaluable reference for all academics, researchers and more advanced students in disability studies and associated disciplines such as sociology, health studies and social work.

The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CPRD) by the United Nations in 2006 is the first comprehensive and binding treaty on the rights of people with disabilities. It establishes the right of people with disabilities to equality, dignity, autonomy, full participation, as well as the right to live in the community, and the right to supported decision-making and inclusive education. Prior to the CRPD, international law had provided only limited protections to people with disabilities. This book analyses the development of disability rights as an international human rights movement. Focusing on the United States and countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East the book examines the status of people with disabilities under international law prior to the adoption of the CPRD, and follows the development of human rights protections through the convention’s drafting process. Arlene Kanter argues that by including both new applications and entirely new approaches to human rights treaty enforcement, the CRPD is significant not only to people with disabilities but also to the general development of international human rights, by offering new human rights protections for all people. Taking a comparative perspective, the book explores how the success of the CRPD in achieving protections depends on the extent to which individual countries enforce domestic laws and policies, and the changing public attitudes towards people with disabilities. This book will be of excellent use and interest to researchers and students of human rights law, discrimination, and disability studies.

This book examines what international human rights law has gained from the new elements in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It explores how the CRPD is intricately bound up with other international instruments by studying the relationship between the Convention rights and those protected by other human rights treaties, as well as the overall objectives of the UN. Using a social model lens on disability, the book shows how the Convention sheds new light on the very notion of human rights. The book provides a theoretical framework which explicitly integrates disability into international human rights law. It explains how the CRPD challenges the legal subject by drawing attention to distinct forms of embodiment, before introducing the idea of the 'dis-abled subject', which stems from a recognition that all individuals encounter disability-related issues during their lives. The book also shows how to apply this theoretical framework to several rights and highlights the consequences for the implementation of human rights treaties as a whole. It builds upon the literature of disability studies and legal and political theory, as well as drawing upon the recommendations of treaty bodies and reports of UN agencies and disabled people's organisations. This book thereby provides an agenda-setting analysis for all human rights experts, by showing the benefits of placing disabled people at the heart of international human rights law.

This book presents the argument that health has special moral importance because of the disadvantage one suffers when subjected to impairment or disabling barriers. Christopher A. Riddle asserts that ill health and the presence of disabling barriers are human rights issues and that we require a foundational conception of justice in order to promote the rights of people with disabilities. The claim that disability is a human rights issue is defended on the grounds that people with disabilities experience violations to their dignity, equality, and autonomy. Because human rights exist as a subset of other justice-based rights, Riddle contends that we must support a foundation of justice compatible with endorsing these three principles (equality, dignity, and autonomy). This volume argues that the “capabilities approach” is the best currency of justice for removing the disabling barriers that consistently violate approximately one billion people’s human rights.

Human Rights and Disability Advocacy brings together perspectives from civil society representatives who played key roles in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, shedding light on the emergent practices of a "new diplomacy" and the larger enterprise of human rights advocacy at the international level.

Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology addresses the global issue of equal access to information and communications technology (ICT) by persons with disabilities. The right to access the same digital content at the same time and at the same cost as people without disabilities is implicit in several human rights instruments and is featured prominently in Articles 9 and 21 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The right to access ICT, moreover, invokes complementary civil and human rights issues: freedom of expression; freedom to information; political participation; civic engagement; inclusive education; the right to access the highest level of scientific and technological information; and participation in social and cultural opportunities. Despite the ready availability and minimal cost of technology to enable people with disabilities to access ICT on an equal footing as consumers without disabilities, prevailing practice around the globe continues to result in their exclusion. Questions and complexities may also arise where technologies advance ahead of existing laws and policies, where legal norms are established but not yet implemented, or where legal rights are defined but clear technical implementations are not yet established. At the intersection of human-computer interaction, disability rights, civil rights, human rights, international development, and public policy, the volume's contributors examine crucial yet underexplored areas, including technology access for people with cognitive impairments, public financing of information technology, accessibility and e-learning, and human rights and social inclusion. Contributors: John Bertot, Peter Blanck, Judy Brewer, Joyram Chakraborty, Tim Elder, Jim Fruchterman, G. Anthony Giannoumis, Paul Jaeger, Sanjay Jain, Deborah Kaplan, Raja Kushalnagar, Jonathan Lazar, Fredric I. Lederer, Janet E. Lord, Ravi Malhotra, Jorge Manhique, Mirriam Nthenge, Joyojeet Pal, Megan A. Rusciano, David Sloan, Michael Ashley Stein, Brian Wentz, Marco Winckler, Mary J. Ziegler.