In 2022, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issued General Comment No. 8 on the right of persons with disabilities to work and employment. The general comment most notably ...recommends States parties to expeditiously phase out segregated employment, including sheltered workshops. After covering the contents of the general comment on this issue in Section I, this contribution argues that the Committee does not take into account that sheltered employment is a complex notion and that domestic sheltered employment systems can evolve. Since General Comment No. 8 outlaws segregated (sheltered) employment, the question becomes, can sheltered employment be legally desegregated, and hence does not have to be expeditiously phased out? Section III illustrates, based on examples from the Benelux countries, that domestic sheltered employment systems do not necessarily exhibit the distinguishing features of segregated employment, as described in General Comment No. 8. Section IV explains that this leaves the CRPD Committee with a decision to make. It could assert that sheltered employment is ipso facto segregated employment, which is to be phased out. It could also draw on its non-exhaustive list of the distinguishing features of segregated employment to incite States parties to at least desegregate sheltered employment legally if they decide not to phase it out entirely.
The case of Archie Battersbee, a 12-year-old boy who suffered a catastrophic hypoxic brain injury, was the subject of several Family Division and Appeal Court hearings between April and August 2022. ...During the protracted legal process, appeals were made by the family to the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee). These were unsuccessful in achieving a stay on the withdrawal of life-sustaining interventions, whose continuance the Family Division of the High Court had found not to be in Archie’s best interests. This commentary focuses on two novel aspects of the proceedings: the Court of Appeal’s overturning of Arbuthnot J’s conclusion that Archie was brainstem dead, and the CRPD Committee’s intervention in response to the family’s appeal.
Deprived of human rights Calderón-Almendros, Ignacio
Disability & society,
11/2018, Letnik:
33, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In June 2018 the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published a report on the educational system in Spain, in response to some complaints submitted by ...SOLCOM (Association for Community solidarity and social inclusion of people with functional diversity). The report has had a substantial impact. A few months earlier, in February 2018, people from all over Spain had taken part in a workshop held at the Universidad de Málaga, as part of a research project entitled 'Emerging Narratives about Inclusive Schools Based on the Social Model of Disability: Resistance, Resilience and Social Change'. The project aims to gather accounts of activist experiences from families and professionals who determinedly struggle to make schools places where all children are recognised through presence, participation, learning and success in the pre-compulsory and post-compulsory education stages. Both the Committee's report and the statements made by relatives and activists at the workshop illustrated and bore witness to a systematic violation of many children's right to education solely due to their disability.
Abstract
This Article explores the juridical implications of indigenous peoples' right to legal capacity in the Inter-American system for cases involving the same right of persons with disabilities ...within that system and beyond. It explicates the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' (IACtHR) three-factor test in Saramaka People v Suriname and analogizes its reasoning with rationales underpinning the right to legal capacity under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (crpd). It then demonstrates how the IACtHR can apply a Saramaka-style test to future cases brought by persons with disabilities challenging legal capacity restrictions. The Article further argues that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) should also apply this rule to align its legal capacity jurisprudence with the crpd's mandates. Finally, it suggests that the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (crpd Committee) ought to consider this rule when resolving individual communications and thereby guide courts.
This article argues that it is not possible to interpret or apply the International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities (Convention on ...the Rights of Persons with Disabilities or CRPD) and its related Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities without drawing on the texts of other human rights treaties and the related jurisprudence of their judicial or quasi-judicial supervisory bodies. Conversely, it is not possible to supervise the implementation of other human rights treaties, where persons with disabilities are concerned, without drawing on the text of the CRPD and related interpretative conclusions of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee).
In Noble v Australia (2016) the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities determined that Australia was in violation of a series of its obligations under the United Nations ...Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The decision was a response to a communication brought by an Indigenous man, Marlon Noble, who had been found unfit to stand trial, had not had the opportunity to plead not guilty, and had been detained in a prison for over a decade. This article reviews the reasoning in the decision, the subsequent response by the Australian government and an inquiry into Western Australia's fitness to stand trial legislation. It argues that reform is urgently required in jurisdictions that fail to accord procedural fairness and suitable assistance to persons whose disabilities may preclude their meaningful participation in the criminal justice system.
Students with disabilities are being subjected to restraint and seclusion in some schools in Victoria, Australia. The practices are being used for purposes such as punishment, behaviour change and ...harm prevention. This article analyses the legality of the practices under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has ratified.It concludes that the use of restraint and seclusion on students with disabilities in some Victorian schools has violated children's rights, under both domestic and international human rights law. The Australian and Victorian governments have failed to recognise the presumption against the use of restraint and seclusion on children with disabilities in school and have failed to justify the associated rights limitations. A cultural shift is required to ensure that children with disabilities no longer experience unlawful rights violations, injuries and mental anguish as a result of restraint and seclusion in the very institutions that have a duty of care to protect them. Reprinted by permission of Brill Academic Publishers
Persons with disabilities have a right to effective access to justice under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This article provides insights on the ...parameters of that right, including a close examination of the history and text of Article 13, which directly addresses access to justice and other relevant UNCRPD provisions. In addition to the UNCRPD, this article discusses implementation guidance from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including its guidelines for State Party reports and jurisprudence. The initial reports by eleven States Parties — Argentina, Azerbaijan, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Hungary, Mexico, Peru and Turkmenistan — are also considered. The Committee’s feedback regarding implementation of Article 13 by these eleven States parties is critiqued for being limited and inconsistent. This article then attempts to clarify what effective access to justice actually requires. It does so by focusing on the insights that can be drawn from implementation of Article 13 since the UNCRPD was adopted as well as implementation guidance from the Conference of States Parties, the International Disability Alliance, the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and the National Center for Access to Justice. This article concludes with recommendations on how the Committee can improve its guidance on access to justice to help ensure that equal rights will not be illusory for persons with disabilities.
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