Which Entitlements and for Whom? The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Ideological Antecedents

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis (monograph)

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Abstract

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted by the UN in 2006, represents the coming of age of a human rights approach to disability. In doing so, it provides answers to the questions what ‘disability’ is, who ‘persons with disabilities’ are and what entitlements are legitimate and relevant in relation to ‘disability’. Partly, these answers flow from the heritage of international human rights law: individual rights and principles such as equality, dignity, liberty and autonomy and choice. An equally important part of the heritage of the CRPD is that of models of disability which have developed within disability research and activism.
This book explores the CRPD through its ideological antecedents. It provides a comparative analysis of the CRPD, the negotiations through which it was developed, four different models of disability (ICIDH, the Social Model of Disability, ICF and the Minority Group Model of Disability), and critical points that have been made against these models. Against this backdrop, the choices made by the negotiators of the CRPD in relation to the named questions emerge as paths chosen at cross-roads, rather than as self-evident.
Through this comparison, the book illuminates central choices that were made in the negotiations and their effects for which entitlements are protected for whom, as well as the challenges facing the monitoring and implementation of the CRPD, with a particular focus on the right to health. There is an ambiguous relationship between the right to health in human rights law and the model which had the strongest influence on the negotiations of the CRPD: the Social Model of Disability. This book shows that while there is considerable common ground between the CRPD and the Social Model of Disability (as delineated for the purposes of this book and as it was understood in the negotiations of the CRPD), the former departs from the latter on central points, which has implications for the monitoring and implementation of the right to health. In conclusion, I argue that the relationship between the Social Model of Disability and the right to health needs to be clarified in order for this right to materialise equally for the entire constituency of the CRPD.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor
Awarding Institution
  • Department of Law
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Halldenius, Lena, Supervisor
  • Alfredsson, Gudmundur, Supervisor
Award date2014 Mar 14
Publisher
ISBN (Print)978-91-7473-957-2
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Bibliographical note

Defence details

Date: 2014-03-14
Time: 13:15
Place: Rättegångssalen, Juridiska institutionen (Tryckeriet), Lilla Gråbrödersgatan 3 C, Lund

External reviewer(s)

Name: Bickenbach, Jerome
Title: Professor
Affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Faculties of Law and Medicine at Queen's University, Canada, and the University of Lucerne, Switzerland

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Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Law

Free keywords

  • ICIDH
  • the International Classification of Impairments Disabilities and Handicaps
  • the right to health
  • human rights law
  • impairment
  • disability
  • CRPD
  • The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  • the Social Model of Disability
  • the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health
  • ICF
  • the Minority Group Model of Disability

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