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The COVID-19 crisis has revealed systemic inequities that uniquely impact persons with disabilities. Although governments have purportedly adopted a human rights framework in providing for persons with disabilities, the immediate policy responses to COVID-19 expose how governments have yet to internalize human rights-based commitments. As a result, the diverse needs of persons with disabilities have been neglected, and persons with disabilities have disproportionately been put at risk of homelessness, domestic abuse, unequal medical treatment, and, in extreme cases, complete abandonment. This chapter explores the differences between the traditional paradigm of welfare-based treatment versus the human rights-based treatment of persons with disabilities. It examines the ways in which the traditional paradigm appears to have dominated COVID-19 policy responses and the adverse impacts to persons with disabilities. In particular, unequal treatment was most pronounced in the delivery of medical care and in group home settings – institutions where persons with disabilities are disproportionality represented. This chapter suggests that policymakers must avoid anachronistic frameworks and provide greater support for persons with disabilities in subsequent crises. Ultimately, the human rights of persons with disabilities can be better protected by making their rights central to policymaking, encouraging greater civil society participation in the policymaking process, and deinstitutionalization.

This paper examines the process under way in Iceland to align national law with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, focusing on the Convention’s call for the active involvement of disabled people and their representative organizations in policy and decision making on matters that affect them. The paper draws on comments submitted by Icelandic DPOs on draft legislation intended to replace the existing law on services for disabled people, focusing on comments relating to their ability to participate in and affect the policymaking process. Furthermore, it draws on interviews with leaders of representative organizations of disabled people that solicited their views on the issue. The findings indicate that there is a reluctance on behalf of Icelandic authorities to make changes to the established process, which limits the active participation of disabled people and their representative organizations. The draft legislation has neither been revised to include provisions for expanding the participation of DPOs in policy and decision making, nor to ensure that disabled people themselves participate in the process.

Accessible summary • The UN Convention on Rights for Persons with Disabilities explains the rights that people with disabilities should have. • These rights are for all people with disabilities, wherever they are in the world. • You can find an easy to read copy of the Convention at this website:http://www.fedvol.ie/UN_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_Persons_with_Disabilities__easy_to_read_reports/Default.403.htl • Countries that say in writing that they will do what the Convention says have to do the work to make this happen. • Countries that say in writing that they will do what the Convention says have to report to the UN Committee about what they have done. Ireland still has to fully agree to the Convention. This is very important. Summary This article provides an account of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It describes why the Convention is important in asserting and safeguarding the rights of persons with disabilities and outlines its core values. It explores the nature of rights in the Convention with an account of the Convention as a blueprint for reference and research. The importance of ratification of the Convention is emphasised.

‘What is needed nowadays is that as against an abstract and unreal theory of State omnipotence on the one hand, and an atomistic and artificial view of individual independence on the other, the facts of the world with its innumerable bonds of association and the naturalness of social authority should be generally recognized, and become the basis of our laws, as it is of our life.’ Recovering the human ‘Human rights’ – here are two words expressing two different normative domains. Most simply assume that the two are mutually reinforcing, mutually implicated by each other, coterminous and coeval. Everywhere in the world, first-year law students are routinely told that we enjoy human rights simply because we are human. The question of whether there are any essential criteria of being human or of ‘personhood’ and, if so, what they are, is left dangling as if solved by the conjuncture of ‘human’ with ‘rights’. That is, rights-talk tends to cloud our view of what it means to be human. And rights tend to impute a certain view of humanity – one that is not necessarily tied to observable reality. Another result is the absence of any clear toeholds in the slippery debate about whether there are any non-human ‘persons’ (e.g. animals or even the earth) and, if so, whether they are the proper subject of rights.

This chapter explores the implementation and monitoring process put in place by the disability Convention. It is predicated on the vital need to gain traction between international monitoring and implementation to facilitate 'persuasion' and 'socialisation' to occur. The chapter explores how and why political failure occurs in the disability context. It also focuses on thorny issue of reservations to the Convention which, unless adequately policed, could delay forever the introduction of a positive dynamic of change at the domestic level. The chapter finally analyses the implementation and monitoring regime of the disability Convention and concludes by assessing its potential to trigger real political change where it matters most - within the States Parties themselves. Keywords: CRPD; persuasion; socialisation; States Parties

Member States are generally taking a civil rights approach to disability: from seeing people with disabilities as the passive recipients of benefits, they acknowledge the legitimate demands of people with disabilities for equal rights. Accordingly, they are making efforts to develop policies that aim at the full participation of people with disabilities into the economy and society. It implies equal opportunities, empowerment and active citizenship in mainstream society. Introduction – the emergence of the rights-based approach to disability in the EU The main purpose of this chapter is to assess the significance and future potential of the Framework Employment Directive in the specific context of disability. A recent report by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions on the status of persons with disabilities in Europe makes for sober reading. It recalls that disability (which it combines with chronic illness) affects 17 per cent of Europe's general population and about 15 per cent of the working population. Disabled people are reported to have twice the rate for non-participation in the labour market as compared to persons without disabilities. The unemployment rate for persons with a severe disability is about three times the level for non-disabled persons. Workers with disabilities typically receive a lower wage than others and segregation is reported to begin at an early age ‘with children often pushed into parallel education networks or otherwise excluded from mainstream society’.