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Australia needs to remedy its flawed interpretation of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) which is allowing human rights violations to occur, a new research paper has found.
Australia’s interpretation of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was preventing reform and allowing human rights violations such as “arbitrary and indefinite detention” and “forced treatments and medical interventions” according to a new research paper by the UNSW Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC).
Rosemary Kayess, a member of the UN Committee for the Rights of People with Disability and co-author Therese Sands, former co-CEO of People with Disability Australia, said the disability rights movement in Australia has driven important, but incremental, policy and legislative reform for people with disability.
However, “it has not led to the social transformation required” by the UN’s CRPD.
“When Australia ratified the CRPD, it made interpretative declarations on articles 12 and 17 that set out how Australia interprets these articles. This does not reflect the current interpretation by the CRPD committee,” they said.
“This has meant that Australia’s interpretative declarations restrict implementation of the CRPD, prevent reform, and allow for human rights violations including the denial of legal capacity, arbitrary and indefinite detention, and forced treatments and medical interventions” of people with disability.”
Ms Kayess said that the CRPD is the road map for the social transformation required to “end the inequality, discrimination and segregation that are the enablers of the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation experienced by people with disability.”
“Ableism is still entrenched in law, policy and practice frameworks which continues to segregate people with disability from the general population. Evidence shows that segregated and parallel systems enable violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation,” she said.
The road map forms the foundation to assist the royal commission to investigate, make findings and determine recommendations.
“If the focus continues to be on fixing, reforming or maintaining existing systems that are built on ableism, the necessary social transformation required by the CRPD will never be understood or realised,” Ms Sands said.
“Instead, they say ‘impairment’ should be treated as ‘a personal characteristic that is one aspect of human diversity’ as the federal, state and territory government move towards a completely inclusive society.
“The social transformation needs to include the recognition that impairment is valued as part of human diversity and human dignity, and therefore people with disability are critical to all aspects of life, leading to a new motto, ‘Nothing Without Us'”, rather than the current motto ‘Nothing About Us, Without Us’ used within the disability sector.”
This comes as calls continue to mend significant gaps in the legal framework designed to protect people with disabilities, especially in South Australia, with major efforts from South Australian legal bodies along with a royal commission after numerous troubling cases of mistreatment.
Leading Australian human rights lawyer Kate Eastman SC also spoke on The Lawyers Weekly Show, about her experience as counsel assisting in the ongoing Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
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Tony Zhang
