Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concludes sixteenth session

Committee on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities

2 September 2016

ROUNDUP

The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities today concluded its sixteenth session after adopting concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay on how they implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  The Committee also adopted the report of the session, during which it adopted its General Comment N° 3 on women and girls with disabilities and General Comment N°4 on the right to inclusive education.

Summarizing the session, Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes, Committee Chairperson, said that the Committee was at a special juncture in time as this session was the last for many of its members.  The Committee was progressing in the implementation of the decision on strengthening of human rights treaty bodies and had made a very intense effort to achieve the results to date.  The Committee had been a pioneer in adopting efficient formulas and methods of work, for example, this Committee was “green” as it did not use paper and its information was digitalized, it used closed captioning, and had made great progress in mainstreaming disability issues in the United Nations processes, for example by participating in the World Humanitarian Summit and ensuring that the needs of persons with disabilities were reflected in the outcome document.

The Secretary of the Committee said that the Committee had adopted concluding observations on initial reports of Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay.  It had adopted views on communication N° 7/2012, the note by the Secretary-General on submissions received between the fifteenth and sixteenth sessions, and its interim follow-up report with regard to Views under the Optional Protocol.  The Committee had adopted its General Comment N°3 on article 6 of the Convention, on women and girls with disabilities, and General Comment N°4 on article 24 of the Convention on the right to inclusive education.  Further, the Committee had adopted the guidelines on independent monitoring frameworks and their participation in the work of the Committee, and the guidelines on periodic reporting, including under the simplified reporting procedure.  The Committee considered matters related to the inquiry procedure pursuant to articles 6 and 7 of the Optional Protocol.  The Committee had decided that the seventeenth session of the Committee would take place from 20 March to 12 April 2017, and would be preceded by the seventh meeting of the pre-sessional working group, from 13 to 17 March 2017.  The Secretary announced the names of the Rapporteurs of States parties whose reports would be considered in the seventeenth session. 

A representative of the International Disability Alliance congratulated the Committee on the adoption of the two General Comments on women and girls with disability and on the right to inclusive education, which were landmark texts with immeasurable transformative power for individuals, families and communities as a whole.  Much had been achieved and it was not possible to be ambivalent about those successes and advances which had led to placing the rights of persons with disabilities firmly on the human rights agenda.  Still, many challenges remained, as attested by the results of the 2016 elections which had rung the alarm for the Committee and other treaty bodies and regional and international mechanisms.  There was still a long way to go to ensure gender equality at all levels – it was the responsibility for all to ensure that opportunities existed and were created for leadership positions to be filled by women and particularly women with disabilities.  The International Disability Alliance paid tribute to the members of the Committee whose terms expired at the end of the year, and whose work and efforts had directly contributed to the fact that there was so much to celebrate at the tenth anniversary of the Convention. 

Orest Nowosad, Chief of the Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that this Committee was exemplary in many ways, and was cutting edge in the way it worked with others, with national human rights institutions and in developing independent national monitoring systems.  The Committee was open to engagement with others, it had moved forward in simplifying reporting procedures and in giving life to the United Nations General Assembly resolution 68/268.  And finally, the Committee already had an established practice with inquires and was actively building its jurisprudence.

The concluding observations and recommendations for the reports that were considered will be available here.  Detailed summaries of all public meetings of the Committee in the sixteenth session can be found here.

The seventeenth session of the Committee will be held from 20 March to 12 April 2017.  More information on the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities can be found at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/CRPDIndex.aspx

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For use of the information media; not an official record

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