The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is an international human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations on 13th December 2006. It is the first Human Rights treaty that gains wide popularity among UN members and is ratified by 147 states, as well as a regional integration organization, the European Union. It first opened to signatures on Mar. 30 2007 then on May 3 2008, it came into force officially after obtaining the 20th states signatures.
CRPD aims to build up an environment that all persons with disabilities can enjoy equal rights with every other people. “Disability” here indicates the result of inconvenience happened after persons with disabilities interact with the society CRPD demands the state governments to establish an accessible environment in all perspectives and to promote the production and design of related technology; these include facilities, public transportation, software and communicative services, and so on. Meanwhile, state governments should also remove the non-accessible facilities and support care services and assistive devices in order to allow persons with disabilities to fully engage in the society, and to live independently.
CRPD also put emphasis on “mainstreaming disability”. It asks ratified states to engage persons with disabilities with the process of law-making and governmental departments’ policy-making. All policy implementation should take persons with disabilities’s equal participation and usage into account.
On Mar. 31 2009, United Nation’s “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” and “International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights” have passed their third reading in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. Since then, Taiwan has already acknowledged the implementation and effectiveness of the two human rights treaties. However, though the treaties include variety kinds of human rights issues, it cannot fully reflect the specialty of persons with disabilities’s human rights problems.
The biggest difference between human rights of persons with disabilities and the others is that human rights of persons with disabilities need to solve two things- whether or not they have human rights, and how to implement their human rights. The key point here is how to fully apply the idea of “accessibility”. Our society is built on an environment solely for people with healthy mental or physical development. Thus, it is one of the most crucial problems in securing persons with disabilities’rights to have access in information, mobility, participation in social lives and other basic human rights without barriers. In this way, we can conclude that to domestically legalize this international human rights treaty, namely CRPD, is very necessary.
CRPD is established to serve persons with disabilities, and to allow them to exercise their rights, which obviously distinguish themselves from the “People with Disabilities Rights Protection Act”. The later’s focus is mainly on “providing welfare services” so that if a persons with disabilities cannot exercise his/her right because of non-accessibility reasons, he/she can hardly request the rights based on the current act law. This is why the implementation and ratification of CRPD in Taiwan is a salient turning point for persons with disabilities group.
