United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and its Optional Protocol was adopted on 13 December 2006 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and was opened for signature on 30 March 2007. There were 82 signatories to the Convention, 44 signatories to the Optional Protocol, and 1 ratification of the Convention.

The Convention follows decades of work by the United Nations to change attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. It aims to change peoples’ view of persons with disabilities as “objects” of charity, medical treatment and social protection and steer them towards viewing persons with disabilities as “subjects” with rights, who are capable of claiming those rights and making decisions for their lives based on their free and informed consent, as well as being active members of society.

The Convention is intended as a human rights instrument with an explicit, social development dimension. It adopts a broad categorization of persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. It clarifies and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made for persons with disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced.

Nepal became the 86th country to ratify the UNCRPD and the 53rd country to ratify the Optional Protocol on May 7, 2010. CIL-Kathmandu, and other Disabled Persons’ Organizations are advocating for the Government of Nepal to actively implement and enforce policies that will see the protection of human rights for all persons with disabilities in Nepal.

Click here to view or download the UNCRPD.