Rights of the disabled
The United Nations is actively involved in the process of the rights of the disabled.
Important declarations and resolutions
In 1971 and in 1975, the General Assembly adopted two important declarations:
- Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons (Adopted 1971)
- Declaration of the Rights of Disabled Persons (Adopted 1975)
The year 1981 was proclaimed as the International Year of Disabled Persons (A/RES/36/77) under the theme "full participation and equality" with the elaboration of the World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons (A/RES/37/52).
In 1993, the General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled Standard Rules of the Equalization of Opportunities for People with Disabilities, (A/RES/48/96).
Human Rights and Disability
In the Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2000/51 (E/CN.4/RES/2000/51) the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in cooperation with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability developed a programme aimed at enhancing the human rights dimension of disability supporting the elaboration of a new convention on the human rights of persons with disabilities strengthening the collaboration with the Special Rapporteur and other relevant UN bodies and agencies.
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (A/RES/61/106) and the optional protocol were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13th December 2006 and came into force on 3rd May 2008. The convention is an international human rights treaty.
In Swedish: Konventionen om rättigheter för personer med funktionsnedsättningar och tilläggsprotokollet.
More UN and the rights of the disabled
- The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD):
- background information
- news
- conventions
- optional protocols
- lists of signatures and ratifications
- reporting guidelines
- Documents of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities carry the following symbols:
CRPD/- | Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities |
Ex. CRPD/C/11/2 | Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Country report. Eleventh session. |
- Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Disability. The High Commissioner's reports on human rights and disability.
- UN Disability. An overview of activities and full text documents and reports on disability and human rights.
- OHCHR. Persons with disabilities.
Human rights, conventions and declarations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Resolution 217 A (III), /A/RES/217(III) adopted by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 during its 183rd plenary meeting.
- The Core International Human Rights Instruments and their monitoring bodies.
- Universal Human Rights Index - UHRI. Human rights recommendations from all parts of the UN system: the UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies, the Human Rights Council mechanisms Universal Periodic Review and Special Procedures. Each document links to other related information in the database.
- Charter-based Body Database. Documents and reports of the Human Rights Council, its predecessor and their subsidiaries and parent organs. Maintained by OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights).
- Treaty Body Database. Fulltext documents from the UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies.
- Yearbook on Human Rights 1946-1988
- OHCHR website for background information, documents and reports.
- Research guides by the UN library Dag Hammarskjöld Library:
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library. UN official documents and open access publications, UN maps, UN voting data and speeches.
- UN iLibrary. UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS (Official Document System) is an full-text database of UN documents published since 1993, including digitized documents published between 1946 and 1993.
- Daily list of documents. Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus is a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (in United Nations Digital Library). References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, Sweden and the UN Library in New York and the UN library in Geneva.