UNCRPD

“Disabilità, giustizia, diritto” è uno studio finalizzato a comprendere se nel panorama gius-filosofico contemporaneo le persone con disabilità siano annoverate tra i soggetti di giustizia e di diritto. Data la complessità del tema, gli itinerari percorsi a tal fine sono molteplici: essi spaziano dal neo-contrattualismo rawlsiano all’approccio delle capacità, dall’etica della cura a quella della vulnerabilità, dal percorso foucaultiano a quello dell’età dei diritti, fino a indagare quale possa essere la compatibilità tra l’astratto soggetto di diritto razionale ed i concreti soggetti con disabilità, che reclamano il proprio diritto all’inclusione. “Disabilità, giustizia e diritto” percorre tali itinerari valorizzando la prospettiva dei Disability Studies che, avendo favorito quel passaggio da una visione “medico-individualista” ad una “sociale” della disabilità oggi recepita anche in ambito normativo – in particolare, si pensi alla Convenzione Onu sui diritti delle persone con disabilità (2006) –, aprono scenari in parte ancora inesplorati, costituendo una sfida difficile, ma al contempo interessante ed indifferibile, per la riflessione filosofico-giuridica contemporanea.

Ten years after the signature of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and few months after the release of the CRPD Committee's Concluding Observations on the Italian report, this article provides a critical appraisal on the protection and promotion of the right to an inclusive education in Italy. Building on the relevant interdisciplinary scholarship, it endeavours to analyse whether Italian law complies with the obligations laid down in the CRPD. It does not engage in an analysis of the theoretical and pedagogical foundations of the policy of integrazione scolastica. Rather, it discusses the national legal framework and relevant case law, in order to identify its strengths and shortcomings in light of Art. 24 CRPD. This article ultimately argues that Italy is committed towards the full inclusion of students with disabilities, but, so far, the implementation of a sub

This situational analysis (SITAN) addresses the question: “what is the current situation for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh?”. It has been prepared for the Disability Inclusive Development programme (which works on access to education, jobs, healthcare, and reduced stigma and discrimination for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, and Tanzania), to better understand the current context, including COVID-19, and available evidence in Bangladesh. It will be helpful for anyone interested in disability inclusion in Bangladesh, especially in relation to stigma, employment, education, health, and humanitarian issues.

According to Vera Moser, the first professorship of healing pedagogy, Heilpädagogik at the University of Zürich in 1931, established pedagogy of the disabled as an academic discipline. Through the definition of the smallest common denominator for all disabilities, which Heinrich Hanselmann called "weakness of the soul," a connecting element of "imbecility, deaf-mutism, blindness, neglect and idiocy" was established. Under Nazi rule, school pedagogy advanced to völkisch, nationalist special pedagogy, shifting from the category of "innate imbecility" to a broader concept of disability. As an outcome of these programs and policies, 300,000 people with disabilities were killed as a part of the "T4 Aktion." Within just a few decades after World War II, special pedagogy expanded its sphere of influence through professionalization and institutionalization in West and East Germany and across Europe. This paper explores how special pedagogy aligned itself with the Nazi regime's discourse and policy on eugenics and race hygiene, leading to the murder and mass sterilization of "disabled" children and adults. It probes questions regarding the extent to which the professionalization of special pedagogy has drawn from the Nazi-era terminology of the deficient and foreign to legitimate the contemporary migrant bias in German and Austrian special pedagogical care.

Analysing ‘modernity’ in India is a complex exercise, as the movement of the ‘modern’ is locally determined and may be non-linear at different sites and contexts. General medicine and psychiatry are illustrative of the difference in how ‘patienthood’ has been historically constructed, with each wave of ‘modernisation’ changing the subjecthood of the ‘mentally ill’. Unlike the public health sector in India, the mental health sector is driven by the ‘mental asylum’ archetype, continuing through late colonial times into contemporary science in refurbished designs. A related set of changes also concomitantly happened in the domain of indigenous healing, with each epistemic shift pushing this domain to the margins of knowledge and healing practice. The paper is set against the time period covering 1850s until recently (2014).

Globally, disabled people are disproportionately excluded from the workforce. For the general population, it is recognised that having a job is closely linked to better health, wellbeing, self-esteem and to social inclusion. Disabled people are known to be disadvantaged in all these arenas and being employed may be a powerful route out of exclusion. The Inclusion Works programme (2018–2022), funded by the UK Department for International Development, aims to improve employment rates for people with disabilities in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. This Working Paper provides an overview of disability as a concept and relevant global treaties and statistics, including evidence of trends and complexities in promoting disability inclusive employment broadly and with some focus on formal employment specifically. We describe the current situation in each of the four focus countries, demonstrating the similarities and differences between them. We then discuss some promising interventions that have been tried, usually on a small scale, in diverse settings, and which may be applicable in our four focus countries. Finally, we present the potential interventions that will be trialled in the Inclusion Works programme, using an innovation-driven, adaptive management approach.

This article explores the intersection of English adult protection law and policy as it impacted on the lives of people with mental disabilities. It evaluates developments that were premised on the notion of the 'vulnerable adult', in light of recent theoretical interrogation of vulnerability and the normative shifts in law and policy advocated by the UNCRPD. I argue that the policy and legal conceptions of vulnerability developed in England and Wales, if reworked, have the potential to transform our understanding of what it is to be vulnerable into a more radical and socially-grounded framework for adult safeguarding. This article concludes with some reflections on what further conceptual and policy work must be done in order to effect that transformation.

Since the 1970s, Italy has undertaken a process of inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools, has implemented an anti-discriminatory educational policy, and abandoned segregated educational practices. In September 2014, the Italian Government initiated a process of " modernization " of the whole educational system, and attempted to fully align domestic legislation with the wide-ranging obligations enshrined in Article 24 CRPD. Law No. 107/2015 on the reform of the educational system empowered the Government to adopt legislative decrees to promote inter alia an effective and inclusive education for persons with disabilities. After a long and somewhat troubled process, a legislative decree on inclusive education was finally adopted in April 2017. This article, building upon previous research, critically discusses the innovations brought by this recent reform, situating them in the broader Italian legislative framework on the rights of people with disabilities. By focusing on Italy as a case-study, this article aims to reflect on the challenges surrounding the creation of an inclusionary educational system that goes beyond a mere integration in mainstream schools and ensures full and effective participation of all learners, meeting the standards imposed by Article 24 CRPD.

Master thesis done as part of the MA in Human Rights Law at the Central European University focused on exploration of EU obligations in relation to its confirmation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in particular Article 19. The thesis investigated two case-study countries: Croatia and Serbia and EU-funded projects aiming to support deinstitutionalization through EU Structural Funds in Croatia and the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assisstance in Serbia (IPA). It found that the EU-funded project did not lead to sustainable independent living services for persons with disabilities due to absence of understanding what independent living services are, absence of institutional support for financial sustainability of independent living services, and insufficiently strong monitoring and programmatic evaluation of EU-funded projects.

The thesis examines the scope of protection for persons with disabilities in Europe regarding housing and the effect of United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities. The Convention and its Optional Protocol was adopted in 2006. The scope thesis introduces the relevant concepts related to disability and housing arrangements in order to discuss the legal matters related to the application of the Convention in European countries. The thesis does not include matters related to physical environment.
The objective of the thesis is to study the approach taken by States regarding housing arrangements in Europe. The research process focuses on two questions; how is the standard of living and right to adequate housing understood in European countries and are there any discrepancies between the Convention and the European approach.
The hypothesis of the thesis can be presented in the following way: The rights guaranteed by the Convention regarding housing will improve the quality of life of persons with disabilities if not limited by regional or national policies.
The primary research material constitutes the Convention itself, other UN documents and various European policies and EU legislation. Secondary sources include books and articles and reports. The availability of international case law is currently limited.
The research process concluded the following findings. Firstly, a mutual understanding among European countries of social inclusion of persons with disabilities can be found. However, the European policies and national application narrow the terminology of the Convention by using limiting expressions. Furthermore, it is possible to argue that the national practice and policies violates the rights guaranteed by the convention.
In the future, the role of the Committee established by the Convention has the possibility to enhance the situation by giving clarifications and interpretations based on findings on State reports on the implementing process. The Committee is also obligated to give recommendations based on the complaint mechanism established by the Optional Protocol. Secondly, the importance of cooperation between signatory parties in finding the best local practice should be taken into consideration. Thirdly, including the persons with disabilities in decision-making process in local and regional level will improve the situation. In general, the Signatory States should abandon short-term solutions regarding, since the requirement for housing is for a long period of time. Finally, the EU Member States have possibility not to follow the EU agendas, since most of the issues examined in the thesis fall into the area of shared competence between the Member States and the Union. Instead of using EU terminology, application of the terminology used in UNCRPD into national policies and legislation and by not placing housing services under EU competition and procurement rules.

This paper explores the relationship between accessible sanitation and disability-inclusive employment in Bangladesh and Nigeria. Both countries have sanitation and hygiene challenges as well as disability-inclusive employment challenges, but the existing evidence on the intersection of these issues that is focused on Nigeria and Bangladesh is extremely limited. Building on the literature where this complex issue is addressed, this paper presents the findings of a qualitative pilot study undertaken in Nigeria and Bangladesh. It focuses on the need for toilets at work that are easy for people with disabilities to use in poor countries. These are sometimes called accessible toilets. Accessible sanitation is not regarded as a challenge that must be addressed by people with disabilities themselves, but as a challenge that must be addressed by many people working together – including governments, employers, and the community.

我國於2014年通過「身心障礙者權利公約施行法」，代表我國身心障礙政策，邁入權利保障的另個新紀元。「輔助科技（assistive technology，簡稱為輔具）」是保障障礙者權利的必要措施，但國內輔具相關研究除聚焦給付制度探討或使用認知及滿意度調查外，便是分析輔具使用成效，較少文獻從「權利保障」角度出發，闡述CRPD與輔具之關係以及輔具在其中的角色。因此，為分析「輔具」作為障礙者權益保障的重要措施意涵，並試圖立基CRPD精神，檢視我國輔具服務政策，本文分為三大部份。首先扼要分析CRPD內容，包含分析社會模式與權利模式意涵；第二部份以「輔具」為核心，分析CRPD相關條文，並且以實例說明，輔具作為保障障礙者權利的意義；第三部份，回到國內層次，從CRPD精神檢視我國輔具服務政策相關措施，提出未來發展方向。

This situational analysis (SITAN) addresses the question: “what is the current situation in relation to formal sector employment for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh?”. It has been prepared for the Inclusion Works programme (which works on disability inclusive formal employment in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda), to better understand the current context and available evidence in Bangladesh, and will be helpful for anyone interested in disability inclusion, especially in relation to employment. It focuses on persons with disabilities, employers, policy, the disability movement, and partnerships.This situational analysis synthesises the most recent existing literature and evidence (drawing on government and non-government sources available online) about Bangladesh generally and on factors relating to persons with disabilities involvement in formal employment.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated national responses have had ramifications for societies around the world, including South Africa. The marginalisation of people with disabilities is well documented in pre-COVID times, and emerging evidence suggests that the crisis has made this worse, as well as presenting new challenges for people with disabilities. This paper presents a review of published research and grey literature of relevance to the proven or anticipated socioeconomic , wellbeing and human right related impacts of COVID-19 on people with disabilities in South Africa and other contexts. Its purpose is to summarise evidence to inform a study on the experiences of South Africans with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of an improved inclusive framework for future management of such crises in South Africa. After a brief introduction, the paper is structured around four main sections. Context is provided by considering COVID-19 and disability both globally and in Africa. Then the literature focused on Humanitarian Disaster Risk Reduction and disability inclusion is discussed. Finally the South African policy and legislation environment on disability and humanitarian action is explored. The review finds that globally there is a limited but growing body of work on COVID-19 and disability. There is a particular dearth of evidence focusing specifically on Africa. The evidence that does exist tends either to be focused on a few particular countries or form part of large global surveys. Much of the global level grey literature published early in the pandemic and subsequently anticipates exacerbated negative experiences for people with disabilities, including exclusion from services, stigma and discrimination and lack of inclusive approaches to relief and support by governments and others. Advisory materials, sometimes focussed on specific subgroups, are generally in agreement about calling for a universally inclusive and disability aware approach to pandemic mitigation across settings and sectors. The limited primary research on COVID-19 and disability is mostly focussed on high income settings and or populations with particular health concerns.

This qualitative study was undertaken as part of the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded Inclusion Works programme which aims to improve inclusive employment for people with disabilities in four countries: Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged early in 2020 the work of this consortium programme was adapted to focus on pandemic relief and research activities, while some other planned work was not possible. The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) led a piece of qualitative research to explore the experiences and perceptions of the pandemic and related lockdowns in each country, using a narrative interview approach, which asks people to tell their stories, following up with some further questions once they have identified their priorities to talk about. 10 people with disabilities who were involved in Inclusion Works in each country were purposively selected to take part, each being invited to have two interviews with an interval of one or two months in between, in order to capture changes in their situation over time. The 10 interviewees had a range of impairments, were gender balanced and were various ages, as well as having differing living and working situations.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) explicitly embeds the concept of reasonable accommodation within the principle of non-discrimination. Article 2 of the CRPD unambiguously recognizes that reasonable accommodation is vital in enabling persons with disabilities to enjoy and exercise their rights on an equal basis with others. This article argues that in the ten years since its entry into force, the CRPD has stimulated a process of cross-fertilization. In particular, it contends that the CRPD has played a crucial role in the advancement of disability equality, and in the recognition of reasonable accommodation as a gateway to the equal enjoyment of all human rights within the European human rights system. By adopting a legal perspective and a traditional doctrinal approach, this article focuses on relevant Euro-pean Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law. It shows the gradual adoption by the ECtHR of the concept of reasonable accommodation as an essential element to remove specific barriers or disadvantages to which a particular disabled individual would otherwise be subject. The primary emphasis of this short article is on the ECtHR case law and on the extent to which it has translated the CRPD and the work of the CRPD Committee into the European human rights system.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of Kenyan primary school teachers using inclusive teaching strategies in a rural setting with many known barriers to the development of a sustainable inclusive education system. This qualitative study examines teachers’ uses of inclusive teaching strategies in primary schools following a series of teacher trainings, classroom observations, individual semi-structured teacher conferences, reflective lesson plans, and pre- and post-questionnaires. Moving beyond legal mandates and attitudinal assessments, the outcomes of this study demonstrate that in a short time, and among a small sample of teachers, administrators, and Ministry officials, a culturally responsive approach to implementing inclusive learning strategies proved beneficial for meeting the needs of diverse primary school students in western Kenya.

The purpose of this paper is to show the impact of a custodial / penal law on client-provider interactions in the mental health sector. Law is the macro environment within which the mental health system works. Mental hospitals , an over-determined mode of service provision in the country , have been instituted and regulated by the Mental Health Act , 1987. The Act is a peculiarity of the health sector. Unlike health care patients , who are distal from the universe of law and courts , psychiatric patients become medico- legal subjects the moment a psychiatric diagnosis is received. The MHA provides liberally for involuntary commitment into a mental hospital; the legal format and process of commitment is more like an arrest , and less like a critical health admission. The police have a role to play in mental hospital commitments , which is another peculiarity. The implications of having a penal law in a health sector has been critically examined ( most notably by Dhanda , 2000 ) . Through the punitive legal devices enshrined in the Act , psychiatric patients become high risk for state coercion , particularly involuntary incarceration and treatment .

Custodialisation of people living with a mental illness is more than just law. It is an outlook and an attitude created in community care giving by the extant medico legal environment. A study ( Cremin , 2007 ) situating the place of law in non - institutional or private settings ( General Hospital Psychiatric Units and Rehabilitation Centers , for example ) showed that this environment is a great barrier to developing voluntary community mental health services. The MHA has influenced not only hospital administration but also the working contexts of care giving staff working therein. A picture of the dangerous and incapable mentally ill patient who has to be managed by force is perpetrated by the MHA , which the staff are expected to maintain. The law sets up expectations from care giving staff contrary to their own professional skills and ethics.

India , the reform of the mental hospitals has always been seen as a legal matter settled by the higher courts ( Dhanda , 2000 ) , the human rights commission ( NHRC , 1999 ) or as public administrative measures by the Mental Health Authorities , the police and prison commissionerates , and other public machinery. Mental hospitals have not been mainstreamed in social science research , public health , and management literature , barring a few exceptions ( Mission Report , 2003 ) .

This qualitative study was undertaken as part of the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) funded Inclusion Works programme which aims to improve inclusive employment for people with disabilities in four countries: Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged early in 2020 the work of this consortium programme was adapted to focus on pandemic relief and research activities, while some other planned work was not possible. The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) led a piece of qualitative research to explore the experiences and perceptions of the pandemic and related lockdowns in each country, using a narrative interview approach, which asks people to tell their stories, following up with some further questions once they have identified their priorities to talk about. 10 people with disabilities who were involved in Inclusion Works in each country were purposively selected to take part, each being invited to have two interviews wi...

This research report presents recent data on the state of persons with disabilities (PWD) in Jordan, including data on access to basic services; the political, social, cultural, and economic context for persons with disabilities; and laws and policies relevant to the rights of persons with disabilities. It also considers the situation for Syrian refugees with disabilities with regards to the above themes. The current official estimate of disability prevalence is 13 percent of the population, amounting to over 1,100,000 people. The 2004 census from Jordan reported a disability prevalence rate of 1.23 percent. In 2007 the prevalence rate was estimated to be 1.9 percent, with 41 percent of persons with disabilities being female. Prevalence figures for disability in the Arab region have historically been far lower than the global disability prevalence rate, which is estimated by the World Health Organization to be 15 percent.

How do you become an 'amputee', 'war-wounded', 'victim' or 'disabled' person? This book describes how an amputee and war-wounded community was created after a decade long conflict (1991-2002) in Sierra Leone. Beginning with a general socio-cultural and historical analysis of what is understood by impairment and disability, it also explains how disability was politically created both during the conflict and post-conflict, as violence became part of the everyday. Despite participating in the neoliberal rebuilding of the nation state, ex-combatants and the security of the nation were the government’s main priorities, not amputee and war-wounded people.

In order to survive, people had to form partnerships with NGOs and participate in new discourses and practices around disability and rights, thus accessing identities of 'disabled' or 'persons with disabilities'. NGOs, charities and religious organisations that understood impairment and disability were most successful at aiding this community of people. However, since discourse and practice on disability were mainly bureaucratic, top-down, and not democratic about mainstreaming disability, neoliberal organisations and INGOs have caused a new colonisation of consciousness, and amputee and war-wounded people have had to become skilled in negotiating these new forms of subjectivities to survive.


Contents:  Part I: Setting the scene: locating disability in Sierra Leone; Intersections between anthropology, disability, development and conflict; A general and socio-cultural analysis of impairment and disability; The political background of the creation of disability. Part II: Rebuilding and rehabilitating the nation state: creating national memory and disabled subjectivity?; Rebuilding the social world; Managing life as an individual?; Disability mainstreaming and social activism; Reparations, reintegration and peace; Looking to the future; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Reviews:

LSE Review of Books:-
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/04/03/book-review-war-and-embodied-memory-becoming-disabled-in-sierra-leone/

Somatosphere:
http://somatosphere.net/2013/09/book-review-maria-berghs-war-and-embodied-memory.html/war-and-embodied-memory-becoming-disabled-in-sierra-leone

Disability & Society:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687599.2014.919172#.VEegSqNwafA

RAI:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.12071_5/abstract

Medicine, Conflict & Survival:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13623699.2014.887458#.VEega6NwafA

African Geographical Review:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19376812.2013.812854#.VEegoaNwafA

Analysing ‘modernity’ in India is a complex exercise, as the movement of the ‘modern’ is locally determined and may be non-linear at different sites and contexts. General medicine and psychiatry are illustrative of the difference in how ‘patienthood’ has been historically constructed, with each wave of ‘modernisation’ changing the subjecthood of the ‘mentally ill’. Unlike the public health sector in India, the mental health sector is driven by the ‘mental asylum’ archetype, continuing through late colonial times into contemporary science in refurbished designs. A related set of changes also concomitantly happened in the domain of indigenous healing, with each epistemic shift pushing this domain to the margins of knowledge and healing practice. The paper is set against the time period covering 1850s until recently (2014).

This paper is concerned with the role of ‘Capacity’ as a conceptual basis for the law’s understanding and treatment of individuals with mental health concerns and mental disabilities. Focusing on the binary nature of the Capacity paradigm under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, it seeks to argue in favour of a more nuanced understanding of and response to circumstances of incapacity and partial capacity. Drawing on Martha Fineman’s and Alan Gewirth’s conceptions of Vulnerability, the Social Model of Disability and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it argues in favour of a spectral approach to issues of capacity and autonomy. Under this framework, emphasis is drawn towards supported decision making through the lens of (Human) Rights; it does so by directing the discussion towards the means of exercising one’s rights rather than whether or not rights are held.

Despite the increasing confidence in the transformative potential of the concept of “vulnerability”, its juridical use is still susceptible of producing some exclusionary consequences: the interchangeable use of terms “vulnerable”, “weak” and “fragile” referred to groups whose members are intended to need a special protection, is likely to have a “labelling-effect” on those who take part to some specific groups, reinforcing their distance from the paradigmatic subject of law. After addressing the current use of the category at stake, the Author will analyse the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCPRD), which constitutes a break with the liberal tradition and implements a universal (therefore, non-exclusionary) notion of vulnerability. Particular attention will be paid to the new conception of legal capacity welcomed by art. 12 UNCRPD.