This publication aims to provide actors already engaged in human rights monitoring such as United Nations human rights officers, national human rights institutions, and civil society with background information on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, its provisions and monitoring mechanisms. It underscores the importance of the entry into force of the Convention and its Optional Protocol in 2008, as the Convention marks a shift in the way disability and persons with disabilities were seen. The publication further underlines that persons with disabilities have a central role to play in monitoring the implementation of the Convention and that a socalled twin-track approach that combines the mainstreaming of disability in all initiatives/projects, on the one hand, with disability-specific initiatives/projects, on the other, is needed in order to ensure equal rights for all persons with disabilities.