Menschen mit Behinderungen im Spiegel des internationalen Menschenrechtsschutzes

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 paved the way for various human rights treaties elaborated at the United Nations level. Besides the two well-known International Covenants on Human Rights of 1966, several special human rights treaties have been concluded which focus on particularly vulnerable subjects like women or children. Nevertheless, persons with disabilities remained, for a long time, invisible on the international human rights plane. This gap has recently been filled by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which has been opened for signature by all states and by regional integration organizations, on 30 March 2007.The purpose of the Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. In order to achieve this goal, the Convention recognizes that disability is an evolving concept and results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. The Convention, thus, substitutes the traditional view that persons with disabilities suffer deficits by the modern view of respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity. In general, the Convention is based on a holistic approach in the work recently done in the fields of social development, human rights and non-discrimination.Against this background, the Convention enjoins the states not only to refrain from intentional and unlawful interferences (duty to respect), but also to take appropriate steps to safeguard the rights of persons with disabilities within their jurisdiction, even in the sphere of relations between individuals, if need be (duty to protect and to fulfil). In particular circumstances the Convention even establishes directly applicable rights between individuals (cf. Art. 9 para. 2 lit. b; Art. 21 lit. c).According to Art. 34 of the Convention, a Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, composed of independent experts, shall be established in order to monitor states parties' implementation of the Convention by examining states parties' reports. Further more, the optional protocol to the Convention recognizes the competence of the Committee to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals.In sum, even if the Convention does not give an accurate definition of disability and does not stipulate a manageable demarcation line with the ambit of other human rights treaties, the creation of a specialized Committee will presumably guarantee more sensibility in the matter than other human rights committees.