Saving the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – from itself

The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a problem child of international human rights law. Like the girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead, immortalized in rhyme by H.W. Longfellow, when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad it's horrid1. In embodying the rights of people with disabilities to accessibility, education, health, privacy, and other conditions likely to encourage their flourishing, the CRPD offers hope to people around the world whose disabilities have been the basis for their exclusion from the usual aspirations of life. However, in promoting restrictions in Article 12 on governments’ abilities to intervene to protect the interests and rights of disabled persons, the CRPD – at least as interpreted by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Committee), set up to oversee its implementation2 – may end up hurting the very people it purports to help