The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations in the 21st century. It seeks to secure the equal and effective enjoyment of human rights for the estimated 650 million persons with disabilities in the world. It does so by tailoring gerneral human rights norms to their circumstances. It reflects and advances the shift away from welfare to rights in the context of disability. The Convention itself represents a mix between non-discrimination and other substantive human rights and gives practical effect to the idea that all human rights are indivisible and interdependent. This collection of essays examines these developments from the global, European and Scandinavian perspectives and the challenge of transposing its provisions into national law. It marks the coming of age of disabilty as a core human rights concern.

Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, Ph.D. (2002), University of Edinburgh, is a professor of Law at Reykjavík University. She has published numerous essays on non-discrimination and the European Convention on Human Rights. She is a member of the board of directors of the Icelandic Human Rights Centre. She is the author of Equality and Non-discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights (Martinus Nijhoff, 2003).

Gerard Quinn, S.J.D. (1989), Harvard Law School, is a professor of law at the National University of Ireland (Galway). He has published widely on international and comparative disability law and was an active participant during the drafting of the UN disability convention. He is the 'focal point' for global National Human Rights Institutions on disability. He was co-author of a Study on disability and human rights for the OHCHR (Geneva) in 2002.