In 2017 the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will examine how well the UK government is doing at promoting, protecting and ensuring disabled people’s human rights.
This includes in areas such as promoting accessibility of buildings and transport, ensuring protection from discrimination, improving public attitudes, increasing participation and achievement in education and employment, ensuring people can enjoy independent living and are supported to make their own decisions, tackling disability hate crime, making sure that people can vote in elections and take part in politics and enjoy leisure and sport.
The Committee is interested in the laws and policies that the government has in place to address these issues, the steps it is taking to ensure that they are implemented and the situation faced by disabled people in their everyday lives.
You can find out more about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and what it covers by clicking here.
The Committee needs help to carry out this task and is seeking evidence and insight from disabled people and their organisations in the UK. This will help it to decide which issues matter most and what it can most helpfully recommend that the UK government can do to improve matters in future.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has provided financial support to Disability Rights UK and Disability Wales to produce an independent report on the implementation of the Convention in England and Wales. The report will:
Set out what disabled people’s priorities are in England and Wales
Provide evidence to the Committee regarding whether and how far disabled people are or are not enjoying their human rights
Assess how effective UK law and policies, and their implementation, are at ensuring that the rights of disabled people are protected, promoted and ensured.
Propose recommendations and questions for the Committee to put to the UK government when it is examined in 2017.
Inclusion Scotland is conducting the same exercise in Scotland, and the two reports will form a single Great Britain report to be submitted to the Committee.
Find out how you can submit evidence to the report and /or attend events across the country to discuss your human rights on the Disability Rights UK website
