Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a UN human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly on 13 December 2006 and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. It entered into force on 3 May 2008 after the twentieth ratification. The CRPD reframes disability from a medical or charity issue into a human rights and social-model question, recognizing that disability arises from the interaction between impairments and environmental or attitudinal barriers.

The treaty contains 50 articles covering civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. Core provisions include:

• Article 3 — general principles (dignity, autonomy, non-discrimination, full participation, accessibility, equality of opportunity).
• Article 9 — accessibility of the physical environment, transport, information, and communications.
• Article 12 — equal recognition before the law, a basis for moving away from substituted decision-making toward supported decision-making.
• Article 19 — living independently and being included in the community, often cited in deinstitutionalization advocacy.
• Article 24 — inclusive education.
• Article 27 — work and employment on an equal basis with others.

The CRPD is monitored by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a body of independent experts based in Geneva that reviews periodic state reports. An Optional Protocol, adopted alongside the Convention, allows individual communications and inquiry procedures; states must ratify it separately.

The CRPD was the first human rights treaty of the 21st century and was negotiated with unusually heavy involvement from disabled persons' organizations under the slogan "Nothing about us without us." The European Union became a party in 2010, marking the first time a regional integration organization joined a core UN human rights treaty in its own right. It is one of the most widely ratified UN human rights instruments, though several major states have entered substantive reservations or interpretive declarations, particularly on Articles 12 and 14 concerning legal capacity and involuntary detention.