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Human Rights

Disability Equality is working with Disability Lib and Human Rights Watch UK to monitor the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (CRPD).

What does this mean?

Our Information and Advice Service is gathering information and details of incidents and situations where breaches of the convention are happening to local disabled people. We are recording their stories and feeding them back directly to the UN.

What’s the Convention for?

The Convention was ratified by the UK last year and although it is not law the government will be held to account for its progress when the UN next report and to respond with the changes needed to improve. This is an important tool making clear that disabled people have the same human rights as everyone else and our laws should fit with the convention.

What are disabled people’s human rights?

The Convention identifies 8 key principles

·        Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one's own choices, and independence of persons;

·        Non-discrimination;

·        Full and effective participation and inclusion in society;

·        Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity;

·        Equality of opportunity;

·        Accessibility;

·        Equality between men and women;

·        Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

Why are we involved?

Many disabled people are often unaware of how these may play a part in everyday life, for instance:

· you may have been discriminated against when accessing employment or health care provision

· you may have been harassed, victimised or bullied

Often, disabled people have problems and issues which are ordinary day to day issues they face all the time, for example: access to benefits; effective transport; lack of support at home for themselves or their carers; public and private services who fail to respond to requests for reasonable adjustments.   They often need support and help with the problem at hand and the Human Rights issues involved may not be seen as the main problem. Disability Equality is trying to ensure that the bigger issues are also reported. The CRPD monitoring project is one way of doing this.

How can I get help?

If you feel that your rights have been ignores or disregarded please let us know. All reports are treated confidentially and reported anonymously.

You can use our contact page here to tell us what happened

or

If you contact or visit our Information and Advice Centre and we feel that your problem or support need also includes a human rights issue we will talk to you about this as well

or

For further details of how you can get involved, or to report your own story, go to www.disabilityrightswatchuk.org/  - you can view both a standard and easy-read versions of the convention here too.

Tags: disability-equality, disability-lib, human-rights-watch, discrimination, employment, health-care, harassed, victimised,

Page Created: Mon 14/02/11 by Mark Buckley, Last Updated: Tue 15/03/11