The Convention explicitly provides for national and international monitoring mechanisms.
At the national level, the Convention proposes three mechanisms:
Focal points and coordination mechanisms potentially have strong and transformative roles in the promotion of the Convention. Traditionally, disability issues have been within the remit of one ministry, such as the health or social affairs ministry. At times, this has meant that some issues have been placed outside the ministry dealing with the general issue. This has created parallel approaches and segregation. For example, the social affairs ministry might deal with the education of children with disabilities and not the ministry of education, thus placing children with disabilities outside the general education system. The cross-cutting nature of disability rights means that they involve many other issues, including justice, education, labour, foreign affairs, housing, finance, sports and culture. The focal points and coordination mechanisms provide a means to ensure that:
The Convention provides significant flexibility as to the form of these mechanisms and States can adapt them to national circumstances. For instance, a coordination mechanism might also have civil society participation, as is already the case of many disability councils.
A national framework for implementation and monitoring that is compliant with the Paris Principles is very important as it provides an independent means of assisting and also verifying the implementation of the Convention. Independent national human rights institutions can play many roles:
There are other ways of monitoring and enforcing the Convention, beyond those outlined in it, such as courts, consumer tribunals and so on. Courts provide legal protection of the rights of persons with disabilities. In other words, they provide legally enforceable remedies when abuse has been proven. They can be particularly relevant when an individual, a group of individuals or a civil society organization decides to bring a test case. The court's decision can then have wide-ranging repercussions such as changes in the law or in attitudes. However, courts can be slow and costly, and potential litigants might have to decide whether their case is worth the time and cost.
At the international level, the Convention envisages two mechanisms:
Other training modules will focus on these mechanisms. However, it could be useful to discuss the reporting process and how the process as well as the Committee's review of reports can help implementation. Such a discussion might have to be tailored to the audience at hand. For example, if participants are principally government representatives, the discussion could focus on ways that reporting can help them with implementation. Preparing the report can help State representatives to:
If the participants are principally from civil society, the discussion could focus on how civil society can influence the State report as well as how it can prepare a parallel report for the Committee which can provide a broader view of the situation of persons with disabilities and the enjoyment of their rights than is available in the State report.
If participants are from the United Nations, the participants can discuss how the United Nations country teams might prepare information for the Committee. United Nations participants might not be aware that information can be sent on a confidential basis to the Committee. Discussion could focus on how the Committee's recommendations can strengthen United Nations programming and also feed into future United Nations programming, including future country analyses and country programmes.