CRPD at 20: Its Evolving Impact on Other International Human Rights Instruments (COSP19 Side Event)

So good afternoon, everybody.
Thank you very much for showing up in such large numbers.
We are very happy that you come to this side event.
And for the cos, this is one of the, I would say nerdier side events.
And I'm even more happy about the turnout.
Now, we have the event sponsored by Switzerland, co sponsored by Costa Rica and New Zealand.
Thank you very much for your sponsorship.
We have also a sponsorship by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, whose secretary is here at the Cos for the first time.
We have a sponsorship by the Center for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Switzerland by Disability Rights International, who provided us with speakers and the Validity Foundation, whose boss is also here today.
Now, I would like to first say a few words on organizing.
There is ISL interpretation and closed captioning.
You can access it through the QR code.
The event will also be broadcast live on UN web TV and on demand as well.
So if you are not able to follow to the end today, you will still have the chance to recoup what you missed.
Now, I would first like to say a few words on what we're doing today and we will then hand the the mic to the representative of the Swiss government.
Now, in the 20 years of its existence, the CRPD has left its mark on the previously established human rights system, such as the UN Human Rights treaties, the regional treaties in Europe, in the Americas, in Africa, Now, under the CRPD, the jurisprudence didn't just developed within the confines of the CRPD.
It has changed human rights in general.
They are no longer what they were when the CRPD came into effect 20 years ago.
Today's side event traces these developments.
It illustrates these developments with landmark cases that were won in many different jurisdictions of international law.
And these illustrations should provide insight into how the CRPD today molds international human rights law.
Now, these illustrations will make it quite clear, I hope, that despite all the successes that we will see today, there will still be a long way to go.
International human rights law, we will see, is not where it should be.
It's not where it used to be, but it's not where it ought to be.
The work is certainly not over.
The Human Rights Committee, for example, has not yet shown that it fully understands what the CRPD means and how it is structured.
The Committee Against Torture still holds on to positions that are probably not compatible with the CRPD, or the European Court of Human Rights refuses to fully incorporate those elements of the CRPD that would require structural changes in the court's jurisprudence.
It's moved, but it hasn't moved all the way.
One thing, however, will become clear today, the CRPD Convention is not just a formidable instrument to lobby the political bodies of government, something most organizations of persons with disabilities regularly do.
It is also a powerful legal tool As a distinctly legal treaty, it opens up the legal mechanisms for enforcement.
In particular, it opens up the court systems on the domestic and on the international levels.
It adds litigation to lobbying.
It doesn't replace political advocacy, but it rather supplements it.
And this supplement is what we are going to hear about in the next few minutes or a little bit more than a few.
It is with the greatest pleasure that I present to you a phenomenal roster of panelists.
I'm very proud that you all agreed to participate here.
Os from the federal government, I will introduce him shortly, Priscilla, from Disability Rights International, Steven, from the Validity Foundation, Casper from OHCHR, Conrad and Noria from the Suse Project on Strategic litigation.
And Derek from the Disability Rights International, all agreed to share their unique experience.
I will introduce them a little bit more in detail once it is their time to speak.
Let me hand over the mic now to Os German.
He's the head of the administrative head of the Federal Bureau for the Equality of Persons with Disabilities.
Who were very happy that you and the government agreed to support us for this side event, and we're looking forward to your introduction.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcos.
Excellency.
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegate is esteemed representatives of civil society and honored guests.
On behalf of Switzerland, I'm pleased to welcome you to this event marking the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of people with Disabilities.
I also warmly thank Acquision handicap in Switzerland for initiating this important event on CRPD at 20 with evolving impact on other international human rights instruments.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the permanent mission of Uktaic and New Zealand, the Committee on the rights of Persons with disability rights International and Duality Foundation for co sponsoring it.
The anniversary is more than an occasion to celebrate progress.
It invited us to reflect on the growing relevance of the CRPD as a legal instrument within the broader international human rights framework.
The CRPD is clearly gaining prominence in both international and national jurisprudence.
In recent years, for example, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court has increasingly referred to the CRPD in its legal interpretations.
This trend strengthens the coherence of the entire human rights system and enhances the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities.
Switzerland strongly welcomes this development.
For us, the CRPD is not merely a political declaration of intent, but a legal binding compass and guiding our national policy.
I'm pleased that we can now continue this discussion today and explore the issue from different perspectives.
Swtherland is firmly committed to preserving and strengthening the international human rights system, including the UN Human Rights treaty body system.
The ongoing reform of this system is essential not only for its effectiveness and sustainability, but also for ensuring that the CIPD continues to influence other human rights instruments.
Only stable at the graorly founded and go ahead and treaty body system can ensure that the CRPD standards are effectively integrated, further developed, and systematically applied by other committees.
Strengthening the bodies is therefore an important prerequisite for reinforcing the CRPD within the international human rights system, ultimately translating into meaningful improvement in the lives of persons with disabilities.
Switzerland will continue to play a constructive role in the further development of the international human rights system and ensure that the CRPD remains effectively embedded within it.
We look forward to today's presentation.
And enjoyed this discussion.
I would like to thank to all the speakers and each of you for your participation in this site event.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wilso.
Thank you very much also for referring to the reform of the treaty body system, which is of great importance, which determines the future of how we operate in Geneva.
Now, that's for another time.
Today, we're doing questions on using the CRPD in litigation.
We have Priscilla Rodriguez Benavides from the Disability Rights Internationals.
She is Associate Director for advocacy and Director of the Women's Health and Justice Initiative at Disability Rights Internationals, Washington, DC office.
Priscilla has a lot of expertise and experience in litigating the CRPD.
She will talk to us today on litigating the CRPD in the inter American human rights system, and we're very much looking forward to the brief view on what you experience in that system, how the CRPD works within the inter American system.
Priscilla, the mic is yours.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Sheffer, first of all, for the invitation for putting together this panel for the invitation to be here.
It's an honor to be part of it together with my esteemed colleagues.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has had an important impact on the jurisprudence of regional human rights bodies like the Inter American Commission and the Inter American Court of Human Rights.
Under the American Convention, both the Inter American Commission and the court can use international standards to give light or that is to interpret the rights recognized in the American Convention.
Both the Commission and the court have actively applied the CRPD to cases involving people with disabilities.
The first case that the Inter American Court decided where it invoked the CRPD was the case of Fland versus Argentina in 2012.
In this landmark case concerning a child with disabilities who suffered severe developmental delays due to the state's excessive delays in processing a civil compensation claim, the court cited the CRPD to define the state's positive obligations and also cited the social model of disability.
Recently, in a case that is being litigated by Disability Rights International in Guatemala, the Inter American Commission issued a decision that found that the institutionalization of persons with disabilities on the basis of their disability violate their right to no discrimination, legal capacity, personal liberty, privacy, family life, among others, and extensively cited the CRPD in its decision.
This case is a case of Federica, a psychiatric facility in Guatemala that DRI started monitoring in 2011.
In this institution, DRI found some of the gravest abuses against people with disabilities detained in this institution, including rampant sexual abuse and even the use of isolation rooms to protect minors from being sexually assaulted.
The Inter American Court is set to hear the case of the Federicoma at the end of the year and DRI, along with our comp petitioners in the case, the collect Independente de Guatemala and the O'Neil Institute for Mental Health and Human Rights, are asking the Inter American Court to go one step further than what the Commission did in recognition of the rights of persons with disabilities.
We are specifically asking the court to recognize that the institutionalization of people with disabilities is not only a form of severe discrimination, but also a violation of the right to community integration, as recognized by Article 19 of the CRPD.
The Inter American Court can only rule on violations of rights recognized in the American Convention.
Adopted in 1969, the American Convention did not explicitly recognize the right to community integration for persons with disabilities.
However, the Inter American Court has developed a practice of recognizing what's called autonomous or new rights that results from considering one or several rights of the American Convention together.
For example, in its most recent advisory opinion, the court found that though the American Convention does not explicitly recognize the right to care, Several rights of the Convention read together, like the rights of the child to a family to health to life and to dignity, must be understood as recognizing the right to care.
In the case of the Federica, the court now has the opportunity of ruling that the rights to liberty, legal personhood or legal capacity, the right to be free from violence and torture, no discrimination of family and private life, among others, must be understood as recognizing the right to community integration as established by Article 19 of the CRPD.
This is an ambitious ask, but what I want to highlight is the power of the CRPD to shape cases, decisions, and even the recognition of new rights in the inter American human rights system and in other regional human rights bodies.
While the CRPD is influencing regional and national jurisprudence and standards, so are the CRPD committee's body of work including its concluding observations, decisions on individual communications, and inquiry reports.
Most recently, the CRPD issued its inquiry report on the systemic and grave abuses against people with disabilities in institutions in Mexico.
DRI requested this inquiry after decades of documentation and exposure that Mexico ignored.
This report is very powerful in finding that institutionalization itself is a form of violence, and it outlines specific steps that Mexico must take to stop institutionalization.
These recommendations will also powerfully shape policy in Mexico and in the region.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Priscilla.
We see COPD has had an enormous influence in the inter American system in individual cases, but also as you mentioned, in an inquiry, that basically you started the committee's ideas about this inquiry and then supported the committee in its inquiry on the ground in Mexico.
We were very grateful for that.
We are going further now with a very similar type of situation, but on a different continent.
Europe also has a regional system of human rights protection centering on the European Convention on Human Rights that is being adjudicated by the European Court of Human Rights.
And Africa also has a regional human rights system with the African Court at its center.
And for this topic, we have Stephen Allen.
Stephen Allen, the Executive Director of Validity Foundation, a person that I'm always in awe of as soon as he speaks about law, and I'm also in awe of his determination that he always shows whenever he talks about the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and how to implement it.
Stephen, I'm very glad you're here, and I'm looking very much forward to your expression to your views on how to implement the CRPD in the European and the African systems.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcus.
Hello everyone.
It's such a joy to be with you.
So let me start.
Look.
20 years after adopting the CRPD, to me, it's no longer a question of whether the convention has influenced human rights law and particularly regional human rights mechanisms.
Clearly, it has and I'm going to point to some examples from our work.
But I think the more interesting question is how that influence has occurred.
When it was adopted in 2006, the convention did so much more than just reaffirm that people with disabilities enjoy the same rights as everyone else.
Indeed, it provided us with a strong legal instrument to challenge disablist assumptions that had long shaped European law and policy and also elsewhere.
Ever since, my organization has been dedicated to using the CRPD as a legal tool to promote systemic change.
Now, in my view and in our overall work, we have seen that the CRPD has been critical in both Europe and in Africa.
In Europe, where we maintain and have a history of large scale segregation of people with disabilities, and in Africa where people with disabilities were simply left out of development objectives and were seen as objects of charity rather than as key actors for reform.
But now the CRPD is increasingly influencing the way in which people with disabilities can take part in regional reform processes, and that is often through using it as a legal tool.
In Europe, the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, that August body has in fact evolved since the convention's adoption.
That court is now addressing issues such as deprivation of legal capacity, deprivation of liberty on the basis of disability, the right to independent living, access to justice, and is even beginning to give some judicial cognizance to concepts such as reasonable and procedural accommodations.
Now, this is a highly conservative judicial system, and even to get initial citations within the case law of the European court has taken many, many years of determined litigation, but we do now see that the court is beginning to use the concepts of the convention and is beginning to live up to what it needs to do, which is align its own standards with international human rights law.
Today, I even hear that the European Union, the other European regional body, has adopted a victims' rights Directive that gives legal recognition of the concept of procedural accommodations within the European Union arch.
I'm not sure if the co legislators in Brussels know what they have opened the doors to, but this opens the doors for persons with disabilities across Europe to enter the courts and have a fair chance of being heard.
Procedural accommodations must now be provided.
And cases such as Stanov and Bulgaria, which you all know helped move the conversation in Europe away from just treating people with disabilities as recipients of care and control towards beginning to recognize them as actors before the law.
But let me be very clear in Europe, we have a hell of a long way to go.
The European Convention still allows for deprivation of liberty of persons of unsound mind alongside those spreading infectious diseases, alcoholics, drug addicts, and vagrants.
We also see the CRPDs impacts elsewhere, and in Africa, advocates, courts, and human rights institutions now are increasingly drawing on the CRPD to challenge segregation, guardianship, forced treatment.
In particular, I would highlight from our work, colonial era mental health laws emanating unfortunately, often from my own country, the United Kingdom.
Challenging things like arbitrary detention of persons with psychosocial disabilities at the president's pleasure and challenging legal standards that continue to use terminology referring to people as lunatics, weak minded, idiots, imbeciles, and morons, legal categories that need to be consigned to history.
The CRPD is also inspiring the development of new regional standards and instruments too.
The leading example from our work is the African Disability Protocol, a regional instrument that not only builds on but extends many of the core obligations and rights first articulated in the CRPD whilst contextualizing these within African societies.
Third, one of the most significant developments over the past 20 years is simply that persons with disabilities are now appearing before courts.
Before treaty bodies, before regional mechanisms, whereas historically those doors were slammed shut.
Now, I want to say from our work, we know that transformation did not occur automatically.
I think of our client, Russi Stane from Bulgaria, whose case helped reshape disability jurisprudence across the European Convention system.
A little known fact about his case, however, is that he traveled to Strasburg to address the court and the court decided not to actually hear him.
They came out with a great judgment, they still didn't even hear it.
I think of TJ in Hungary, who we represented, and whose deaths forced the courts to confront the reality that institutionalization itself is a form of violence, a cause of great harm and suffering in Hungary and that institutionalization must now be critically reviewed by the courts.
Let me also say I think of the recently deceased Sylvester Katonoka from Zambia, whose advocacy challenged colonial era approaches to mental health law.
Who initiated a petition that is now pending before the African Commission on Human and People's Rights and indeed, I think has the potential to really challenge violations of the right to legal capacity across the continent.
We look to Africa for this.
At the same time and let me say a few more words, the influence of the CRPD should not be viewed as inevitable or uncontested either in Europe or in Africa.
In Europe, the debate surrounding the proposed additional protocol to the Oviedo Convention demonstrates that European countries still remain and hold important disagreements with their obligations under the CRPD.
The European Court of Human Rights rightfully, when thinking about this Oviedo protocol, reserved judgment.
As they were aware, this could create conflicting standards, legalizing forced psychiatric detention and treatment in Europe in direct contradiction to the CRPD.
Let me tell you, Rusi Stanev's case is often cited by those who advocate for this protocol.
He would have been appalled that his name was being used to now justify a new system of incarceration.
Let me also say in Africa, we continue to see prejudicial rulings questioning the testimonies of women with psychosocial disabilities who have experienced sexual violence in mental health facilities and feet dragging, even when the courts have ordered that the arbitrary detention of persons with psychosocial disabilities be reviewed.
Now, 20 years after its adoption, My view is that the greatest achievement of the CRPD is not simply that courts, treaty bodies, and regional mechanisms are increasingly relying, both on the text of the convention and the important jurisprudence of the CRPD Committee.
No, I think it is that we are now seeing persons with disabilities demand justice in courts and demand implementation of judgments to change real lives.
For the next 20 years, the real question is whether our regional mechanisms will have the strength to stand up to what is an onslaught against human rights and whether we have the power collectively to support implementation of those core obligations going forward.
I think we have laid the path we've opened the doors.
We just now need to keep walking that path.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Stephen, for this powerful reminder how the CRPD Convention can be an effective instrument to move the document, this European Convention, a document from 1950 to today's world and to remove the remnants of colonialism that are still very much alive.
Thank you very much for this.
We're going now to Caspar Plum.
Caspar Plum is a Human Rights officer with the United Nations Petitions Unit in Geneva at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
He is responsible for individual communications that reach our committee, the CRPD Committee.
I've had the pleasure of working with him for a sustained period of time dealing with the cases that came to our committee.
I'm very pleased that Casper will now say a few words on how the CRPD Convention influences other UN human rights treaties.
The floor is yours, Casper.
Thank you very much.
Pleasure to be here today.
It's always hard to follow on after such great speakers initially.
We should have changed the order maybe.
That's just joking.
Yes, as Mark has mentioned, I will be mostly focusing on the other UN Human Rights treaty bodies, which is to say the committees, the other nine committees like the CRPD Committee that supervise the implementation of the International Human Rights treaties, such as the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and so forth.
Um, so I would like to start with a simple proposition, which has already been iterated by the previous speakers, which is that the CRPD Convention has the potential and has already influenced how most, if not all of these, treaty bodies deal with the human rights of persons with disabilities.
The other treaty bodies do not interpret the CRPD directly, but the way they address disabilities is increasingly informed by the CRPD Convention.
And this is significant because there are still more than 80 states that are not yet party to this CRPD optional protocol.
So I will briefly illustrate with one example from the individual complaints procedure, one of the main mechanisms that most treaty bodies have, and then say a few words about what this means in practice and how organizations of persons with disabilities and others can invoke disability rights before the other treaty bodies.
So let me start with an example from the individual complaint procedure.
So the individual complaint procedure, as many of you know, is a quasi judicial procedure that most treaty bodies have and which allows individuals subject to certain conditions to complain of violations of the International Human Rights treaties.
So I'll take an example of the Human Rights Committee, which oversees the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights.
So as all of you know, the Human Rights Committee predates the CRPD by several decades, but it's more recent jurisprudence increasingly reflects that it is informed by the CRPD as to how it approaches the rights of persons with disabilities.
So in a recent case against Sweden, the Human Rights Committee examined a complaint brought on behalf of Mr.
Merne who had the psychosocial disability and who was tragically shot and killed by the Swedish police.
And the committee, so the Human Rights Committee found that Sweden had violated Mr.
Merne's right to life because it had not shown, among other reasons, that the authorities had planned and conducted the police operation with adequate regard to his psychosocial disability or what measures the police had taken to protect his right to life.
And in response to the committee's decision, Sweden informed the Human Rights Committee that or it was in the process of changing national legislation to place further limits on the use of firearms so that all relevant circumstances must be considered, including if the person has a disability.
And I think it's safe to say if even if as Markets mentioned, the Human Rights Committee maybe still has a lot to learn from the CRPD, I think it's safe to say that the committee's conclusion and the language that it used is nevertheless broadly consistent with the rights based approach to disability that is informed by the CRPD Convention.
There are many more examples we could cite, but I won't do this.
I would just say a few words about how organizations of persons with disabilities and others can invoke disability rights in the complaint procedure of the treaty bodies because I think many of those who are present here today might be interested.
And this matters because invoking disability rights can encourage these other treaty bodies to uphold a rights based approach to disability.
So first, of course, if the state is a party to the optional protocol to the CRPD, the most logical avenue would be to file a complaint with the CRPD committee.
But as I mentioned, um, Almost half of all UN member states are not yet party to the CRPD optional protocol.
There are also situations where you might want to invoke disability rights before the complaint procedure of the other treaty bodies, whether because of these admissibility criteria or because of other reasons.
These committees, as I mentioned, can only interpret their own treaties.
They cannot make interpretations of the CRPD.
Nevertheless, they generally aim to ensure that their jurisprudence is consistent with that of the other treaty bodies.
So practically speaking, one way to invoke disability rights is to invoke some of the general non discrimination provisions that exist in many of the treaties.
We can think, for example, of Article 26 of the ICCPR.
There are also two provisions in the Convention on the Rights of the Child that specifically refer to children with disabilities.
And as you know, of course, the CRC actually predates the CRPD.
So those were the first international treaty provisions on children with disabilities.
Of course, you can also invoke any applicable relevant treaty provisions arguing that they should be interpreted in a disability sensitive way.
It's possible in this regard to make reference to other relevant norms such as general comments, many to explicitly refer to persons with disabilities, as well as jurisprudence of the CRPD under its own optional protocol.
So far, the CRPD has rendered 90 final decisions and in 46 of those, in half of those cases, it found a violation of the CRPD Convention.
Um So you can rely on this jurisprudence if you're interested in bringing a case before those other treaty bodies, depending on the relevant provisions.
So the key point here is that the CRPD has the potential to influence how all treaty bodies deal with disability rights within the framework of their own mandates and that there are various ways to invoke disability rights before these different treaty bodies in order to promote a rights based approach to disability.
So I will stop here and hand the floor back to Marcus.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Casper.
We see the UN treaty body system is not the same that it was before the CRPD came into effect.
It has changed.
It has changed slowly, and some treaty bodies have changed more, others have changed less.
But even as you mentioned, the Human Rights Committee that tends to be more on the conservative side has picked up the basic ideas behind the CRPD Convention.
Now, you mentioned the CRPD can be invoked in litigation before other human UN treaty bodies.
What we're going to hear about now is just this type of case.
We're going to hear about the case from Switzerland that was brought to the Children's Rights Committee, the CRC, and because Switzerland has not ratified the optional protocol to the CRPD, it's lingering in the administration, and we all presume it has died.
Now, we will hear from two representatives of Swiss OPDs two representatives who are intimately involved in this case.
The first is Conrad Stocker.
He is co Executive Director of the Association, Sebrad Swiss, and a member of the executive board of the umbrella organization, Alesion De Cp.
He is a very experienced activist, professional communicator and has leadership roles in Swiss OPD.
Thank you very much, Conrad, for coming here and we are looking forward to the first half of the case that the two of you are going to present.
The mic is yours.
Thank you very much, Marcus.
Dear participants, inclusive education must go from being a lucky occurrence to the norm.
My name is Konrad Stocker.
I live with mild cerebral palsy and I work for the Swiss Cerebral Association, Fringl said about Schweitz.
This is the umbrella Organization for people with cerebral palsy, their families and professionals in Switzerland.
Today, Nua Frei and I are discussing a legal case concerning inclusive education.
I am speaking from my own experience.
In 1974, 52 years ago, I met a young elementary school teacher who said, Yes, Conrad is coming to my school, and we will make it work together.
I was already a year older than my classmates.
I had not learned to walk until I was four, and on school trips, the teacher would push me in a stroller.
But we did really make it work.
I am not sure if I would be here today if that young woman had only seen my disability and not my potential.
I was very lucky.
My teacher embodied inclusion long before the term even existed.
She believed in herself and in me.
I am honored to advocate for inclusive education in Switzerland today.
For example, in the case we will be telling you about a few years ago, a family reached out to our organization.
They asked for legal support in keeping their child with cerebral palsy in a mainstream school.
Swiss disability organizations have centralized their legal expertise regarding the CRPD within the umbrella organization, Inclusion Handicap.
For this reason, I referred the family to them.
Inclusion handicap then incorporated the case into the Reclaim Project, which is a joint project of Swiss disability organizations focused on strategic litigation.
The child was able to remain in mainstream school throughout the ongoing legal proceedings in Switzerland because the first court ruled in favor of inclusion.
However, the municipality refused to accept this decision and appealed it to the next higher court.
All subsequent courts, including the Federal Supreme Court ruled against inclusion.
This was even though from the family's perspective, the school is implementing inclusion effectively.
The child is now in the fourth grade at the mainstream school and would like to stay there.
Because Switzerland has not yet ratified the optional protocol to the CRPD, we were unable to bring the case before the CRPD committee following the Federal Supreme Court's decision against inclusion.
However, since a child with disability is involved, we had the idea of bringing the case before the Committee of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the CRC Committee, since Switzerland has ratified the optional protocol to the CRC.
It truly saddens me that between the time when I was confronted with the possibility of being excluded and today, that means within 52 years, we have not made much more progress.
What would it take to finally change that? How can inclusion go from being a locky occurrence to the norm? We must finally realize that having a disability is perfectly normal.
We must understand that disability is highly likely to appear at some point in everyone's life, whether early on or later in life, perhaps following an accident or the onset of age related ailments.
Once we grasp this concept, we will truly have understood inclusion.
It must become the norm, not the exception.
This is how we can put into practice what a pioneering young woman exemplified 52 years ago, both today and in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Conrad.
We will now immediately go on with the same case that Noria Free will tell us about from the legal side.
Noria Frye is a lawyer for Inclusion Handicap Switzerland.
She leads the strategic litigation Pro and she works long hours.
Noria Free, the floor is yours.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcus, dear participants.
The emergence of human rights treaties in the 20th century transformed the legal system.
Yet the prevailing understanding of equality meant that these rights had little practical effect for people with disabilities.
The CRPD adopted 20 years ago, addressed this gap by specifying the measures states must take to ensure the effective realization of existing rights for people with disabilities, including general obligations and reasonable accommodations in individual cases.
In this respect, the CRPD goes far beyond the original conception of human rights protection.
In our case, before the CRC Committee on Inclusive Education, which Conrad just told you about, we therefore argue that the CRC must be interpreted in light of the CRPD and the practice of the CRPD committee.
This approach is supported by a joint statement of the CRC and the CRPD committees, which reaffirms that the principles and rights enshrined in the CRC and the CRPD are interrelated with respect to children with disabilities.
The statement also emphasizes that the right to inclusive education of children with disabilities is incomportable with maintaining separate education systems and requires one education system adapted to the diverse needs of all children.
Implementing the CRPD in Switzerland requires significant changes to the school system.
Courts in Switzerland have been reluctant to order such systemic reforms, and in our case, all courts, except the first instance, rejected the child's inclusion in mainstream education.
Therefore, in October 2025, we submitted our communication to the CRC committee and requested interim measures to allow the child to remain in mainstream school during the proceedings.
The committee granted the request and asked Switzerland to suspend the transfer to a special school.
In April, Switzerland suddenly submitted a request to lift the interim measures immediately.
The decision on this request is pending.
Although the interim measures are still in effect and Switzerland has indicated that it will comply with it, otherwise, why submit a request for lifting, the responsible canton and municipality have decided to segregate the child starting from the next school year in August.
Case illustrates the difficulties of carrying out treaty body decisions in a federal state.
To date, the implementation of these decisions in Switzerland has only concerned matters under the federal government's jurisdiction.
But what happens when implementations falls under the responsibility of the cantons and municipalities, as is the case in Switzerland regarding elementary school.
Our case therefore raises new questions for Switzerland and it has sparked considerable public and political debate, particularly regarding the binding nature of the UN committee's interim measures.
To prevent the segregation of the child, despite the committee's pending interim measures, we initiated a new proceeding in Switzerland about two weeks ago.
The outcome is still uncertain.
Despite the challenges described, I encourage you to advocate for the application of all human rights in all proceedings in light of the CRPD, as the CRPD remains the primary legal source regarding the human rights of people with disabilities.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Noria.
We see when the binding effects of interim measures by UN treaty bodies become a matter of major public political discourse in a country and, as I might add, a reason for friction between several government departments.
I think we see how powerful litigation can be.
We now go on also with respect to the rights of children with disabilities to Eric Rosenthal.
Eric Rosenthal is founder and Executive Director of Disability Rights International, the same organization that Priscilla belongs to, that organization that initiated the inquiry proceedings of our committee.
He is a leading human rights advocate has conducted investigations, trained activists in a large number of countries.
I'm stopping here because otherwise we would be running even later as we are.
Eric, Mike is yours.
Well, thank you.
It's a very great pleasure to be here and I just want to take this moment to thank Marcus in particular.
The inquiry report and investigation that the UN did on Mexico would not be what it is without your personal involvement.
We watched Marcus as he wandered through the psychiatric facilities and institutions of Mexico.
What happened to Marcus is what happens to almost anyone with a heart who gets inside of those institutions, it changes who you are.
And I can only believe that by the end of that inquiry, the force and the passion that you gave to that inquiry report could only have come from personally being here.
I just want to thank you and shake your hand for all that you have done.
I I will be speaking about children with disabilities and the overlay between the CRPD and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and also looping in what my colleague Priscilla spoke about about our litigation before the Inter American Convention, because we're really talking now about three dimensional chess in terms of the interaction between the different conventions.
This is very personal to me having been inside these facilities and seen what is happening, and I think of a child at the Fed Oma Psychiatric facility on our first visit an adolescent boy locked up in an isolation cell.
And we asked, what is the child doing in the isolation cell? And they said he is there for his own protection and safety.
He's there for his protection and safety because if we were to release him from the isolation cell, he would be violated within minutes.
So consider this.
The institution is itself there for his protection and safety, and the institution is so dangerous that he needs to be locked up in isolation for his own protection and safety.
The rights of that child are now going before, as we argued before the Inter American Court in the autumn, him along with 5,500 people who've been locked up in that facility since we brought the case.
It's actually the second largest case ever brought before the Inter American Court of Human Rights.
We will be discussing his rights and his remedies, and as it turns out, the way the court interprets the right of children with disabilities and whether it draws from the CRPD or the Convention on the Rights of the Child will determine whether this child simply has a right to live in a smaller, cleaner, nicer institution or whether that child has what all children should have a right to, as recognized under General Comment five of the CRPD, a right to live and grow up with a family.
What is the rights of that child? The court is going to be forced to deal with an issue which remains unresolved to this day between these two conventions.
Before I plunge into those conflicting standards, I want to step back and point out one other area of difference between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the CRPD, which actually is a much more hopeful area and an area where there are synergies, where the two disability communities and the children's rights community have so much to learn from each other.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child in Article 12 of the CRC has a really cutting edge and important recognition of the right of children to be heard in all matters affecting them.
Now, it's written in the individual, the right of the child capable of expressing his or her views to express his or her opinion as to what the individual rights are.
Now, the idea of simply communicating with the child itself and allowing that is still cutting edge and very important and so widely overlooked that we in the disability community have a lot to learn from what children's rights groups have been doing to make sure that the child's perspectives are truly recognized.
I have problems with some of the language of what Article 12 of the CRC says and feel it could be effectively updated with what we have learned in the disability community about legal capacity and an inherent right to make choices, and a good study of Article 12 versus Article 12 of the two different conventions would be really valuable.
But what is missing from the Convention on the Rights of Child is what is so powerful about the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities that appears throughout the convention, but especially in Article 43, is the right to people with disabilities through their organized representatives to participate, to be engaged, to help make decisions, to help policy development, to help legal development, to help with human rights monitoring.
Throughout the Disability Convention, there is active engagement of organizations of people with disabilities on all matters that affect them.
It's not just an individual right to be heard, it's a collective right of the community to participate That needs to inform children's rights work because to this day, they overlook the role of disability organizations.
Those children and institutions grow up to be adults and if we don't allow for adults with disabilities and organizations of people with disabilities to participate in creating remedies, we will have overlooked their rights.
With regard to children in institutions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has that language.
It says, For their protection, children who are separated from their parents have a right to special protection which may include placement in a institution suitable for children.
The UN has adopted the guidelines for the alternative care of children, which calls for the closure of large institutions, but for the preservation of small institutions.
That may mean group homes, that may mean family like environments.
One of the main standards that is discussed in care that is promoted by UNICEF, that is promoted by international agencies around the world, the UN guidelines on alternative care still says that small institutions need to be regulated and maintained.
When the CRPD was adopted, there was a harmonization process and the CRPD Committee and the CRC committee got together to harmonize standards and the harmonization process succeeded in almost every area, but they had to gloss over these differences because the two communities dug in their heels and were not willing to address the actual areas of conflict.
The UN guidelines for alternative care, which is clearly in conflict with general comment number five, continues to be cited and used billions of dollars a year from the United States alone, $4.5 billion a year goes to support institutions abroad.
Throughout the world, institutions for children are exported and supported by international donors and whether those children are going to live in a family or a smaller, cleaner, nicer institution is a matter worth billions of dollars and 10 million children's lives that continues to be at stake and unless those issues are resolved, the CRPD is essentially being treated as a second class treaty.
If the CRC can be used and standards in the CRPD Committee are overlooked, the CRPD, 20 years later is a second class treaty and that issue has not been resolved.
We are going to be litigating this before the Inter American court.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the Inter American court gave life to the CRPD in a way that we have not seen from the CRPD committee itself.
Let me just there are members of the CRPD committee here, and I am deeply grateful for their support because I know they have put blood, sweat, and tears into standing up for and protecting these rights.
And we are deeply grateful for their support, and we understand it is a political process.
There are political limitations to being able to one treaty does not override the other.
Let it be said that it is unfinished business and that it may be played out in the courts, if not in the committees themselves.
Thank you.
Thank.
Thanks, Eric.
Well, the COPD convention certainly has been confirmed conferred second class citizenship upon it in many jurisdictions.
My friends from Switzerland know what we are talking about.
Now, we've come to the end of our presentations, and I would like to invite you to make comments, to ask questions and particularly questions to the panelists here and please say your name and very briefly the institution from which you're coming from.
Yes, please.
Okay.
So I'd like to ask about what panelists think about the prospects for actually dealing with a couple of the difficult areas.
For instance, how are we going to move the Human Rights Committee, Committee Against Torture, European Court of Human Rights to actually get rid of the standards that allow detention in mental health settings, essentially, and forced treatment in those settings.
Also, I don't know if anybody's position to talk more in detail about another aspect of the Mexico Inquiry report.
But Mexico did not accept the parts of the recommendations dealing with conforming their laws at the state level to the requirements of the CRPD in terms of abolishing involuntary committal and compulsory treatment.
And so if anyone is capable of addressing that, how to address that aspect as well because that also relates to the issue of federal versus state.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Who would like to start with answering this question, Stephen? Yes.
There's a very important opportunity right now in my view for the treaty bodies to begin working through this issue of torture, ill treatment, and violence against people with disabilities.
The CRPD Committee has published a draft guideline on this topic.
Actually, my view is that that guideline must engage with directly the standards from other treaty bodies, but also make clear where those treaty bodies need to update their standards.
By which I specifically refer to the subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and the Committee Against Torture, but also those standards that continue to be held by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Europe, which I'm afraid to say are far beneath those even of the subcommittee.
Now, I think this guideline is very important and it's very important to get it right.
And what I mean by that is to be very, very clear on the definitions, up to date, recognizing disability specific forms of torture and ill treatment, which all treaty bodies need to give recognition to.
Just to say Marcus with us, a couple of weeks ago we were in Vienna.
We had a dialogue which included members of national preventive mechanisms under OpCT as well as independent monitoring mechanisms under the CRPD, as well as representatives of the CRPD Committee, the subcommittee, and the Committee for prevention of Torture in Europe.
Let me say there was very robust dialogue on the need for standards to be updated in accordance with the absolute prohibition on forced detention and forced treatment under Article 14 of the CRPD, and the process needs to happen.
Let me stress as validity foundation that we expect those committees to work together on that dialogue.
We expect the representatives of the Committee Against Torture, the subcommittee, the European Committee come together and discuss the need to systematize their standards.
Why? Well, because at the moment, European countries can essentially choose which standards to apply and it therefore reduces the protection for all.
Council of Europe is advancing a aggressive protocol that will legalize forms of disability based torture against persons with psychosocial disabilities.
The European Union, which has an opportunity to intervene in this process, has not been as strong as it could be and should be coming forward.
My view is that we have a crucial opportunity now the CRPD Committee has the disability based violence guidelines.
We want to see that developed further to give as expansive and strong protection as possible and engage with those other bodies.
I'll stop.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, Steven, particularly for reminding our committee to do its homework with the guidelines.
There is serious homework to be done on that front.
Priscilla, Yes.
Just thank you, Tina, for your question about the Mexico inquiry.
Just very briefly, Mexico, the one thing they've done, the one thing they are good at is passing legislation.
There's been important reforms to the right to informed consent and to the right to community services in 2013, then again in 2022, and these efforts, especially 2022 reforms were supported by civil society organizations.
Mexico, in my opinion, this is my personal opinion, but it's basically saying, well, we haven't done anything else, but at least we've passed legislation.
I believe the recommendations from the CRPD recognize that, recognize the legislation that Mexico has passed.
But they do have very specific and concrete comments which I think are very valuable and Mexico would be good to take up on.
I believe Mexico is saying we've done enough.
It's good in terms of legislation, but it's not enough.
But the real challenge is that even though the legislation is there, it's not being implemented.
The reforms were passed in 2013 that were again repeated in 2022.
If it's about passing legislation, Mexico can do it.
But if it's about implementation, that's where the real challenge is.
Thank you, Priscilla.
And we see time and again that federal states have quite difficulty of implementing the CRPD on the lower federal levels.
We've seen it with the case my Swiss colleagues presented.
That's a federalism issue where the federal government didn't have the guts to do something.
We've seen it with the inquiry in Mexico, and we have people in this room who know exactly what I'm talking about here.
I would like to ask other participants here for their questions to the panelists.
Yes, please.
And please wait until the light is red.
Introduce.
Thank you.
I'm Santosh Kumar Runta President World Blind Union.
Just a quick comment.
The cases that our panelists discussed today, to my understanding, points to a very important challenge that we have.
CRPD has driven special laws policies in different areas of life for promoting participation of persons with disabilities, but there is a disconnect with the mainstream laws regulating different systems, education, employment, and there is no effort of convergence between the mainstream laws and special laws.
Therefore, these implementation gaps we see every day in every country.
So I think we will also have to think when we think of strategy for future, how to ensure how we advocate for integration of special provisions for us into mainstream laws regulating different systems and areas of life.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
That's one of the main issues that we're facing on the legal side to change laws in a way to fully render them inclusive.
And that is why implementing the CRPD is such an enormous task, even though its goals on the basic level are very modest, just protecting the same rights to persons with disabilities as to everybody else.
Now, I was reminded by the representatives of our mission to not spend more time in this room than we are allotted to and it is 27 past the hour we have the room until half past.
We need to come to an end of this event.
I think we have presented with some of the most fundamental landmarks of jurisprudential developments in the influence the CRPD exerts on other instruments of international human rights laws.
These are the highlights of what the CRPD has achieved not in legislation, but in case law and legal jurisprudence.
It shows that the law is moving slowly as always, but persistently and insupressibly, not by itself, but due to the dogged pursuance of determined lawyers and activists.
And this, in turn, again, will change the lawyers and their ways of thinking about the rights of persons with disabilities and their rights, the lawyers, the judges, and the other legal personnel.
This will move the law and society to further change as envisaged by the CRPD.
The genie has been let out of the bottle.
After 20 years, I don't think there is any way to move backwards, but it will be difficult to keep moving forward.
The rights of persons with disabilities are here to stay, to further develop, to increasingly changenational human rights law, and to move our societies further toward full inclusion of all persons with disabilities.
I thank the Swiss government for their support in hosting this side event, all our panelists for their willingness to share their experience and expertise, the missions of Costa Rica and New Zealand for their endorsement.
Validity Foundation and Disability Rights International for lending their expertise and credibility.
The petitions Unit at OHCHR in Geneva for sharing their enormous interinstitutional knowledge and my friends from the Swiss OPDs for daring to venture out into the world.
And most of all, I thank you, dear participants for being interested in this topic, in this rather legal issue, and for your steadfastness in your pursuit of making the CRPD a reality wherever that may be.
Thank you very much.
Our side event is closed.
Thank you.