Extracting Protection for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities from Human Rights Frameworks: Established Limits and New Possibilities

O’Cinneide, C. (2009). Extracting protection for the rights of persons with disabilities from human rights frameworks: Established limits and new possibilities. In Brill | Nijhoff eBooks (pp. 163–198). https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004169715.i-320.48

Abstract:

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a major development in international human right law for two different reasons. To understand how the Convention, and, to a lesser extent, the Social Charter and other instruments depart from much of the ‘mainstream’ of human rights law, it is necessary first of all to examine the limitations of some of the major rights instruments that form this mainstream. This will be done by considering the extent to which such instruments, and in particular the ECHR, provide protection for persons with disabilities. Human rights law must do more than just protect the self-sufficient autonomous individual against state interference: there is also a need to recognise the reality that every individual exists in a relationship of interdependence upon the state, and that individuals have positive rights to the provision of essential social goods. Keywords: European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); human rights; UN Convention.