Publications

Disability Rights in Northern Ireland UKIM Supplementary Submission

This submission has been drafted jointly by the Equality Commission for NI and the NI Human Rights Commission in furtherance of their role as the “Independent Mechanism” in Northern Ireland (NI) to promote, protect and monitor the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

In addition to the document, the video below was produced by the United Kingdom Independent Mechanism (UKIM) and contains a sign language version of UKIM’s main submission to the UNCRPD. In 2009 the UK Government designated the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI), the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) and the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) as the UK’s Independent Mechanism under CRPD Article 33, tasked with promoting, protecting and monitoring implementation of the CRPD.

Since the UK ratified the CRPD in 2009, UKIM has taken active steps to involve disabled people and their representative organisations as part of fulfilling its monitoring role and encouraged their full participation in the monitoring process. The individual independent mechanisms have used a range of activities to involve disabled people across the UK. For example, we have produced guidance and other resources and held engagement and capacity-building events, roundtable discussions and web-based seminars to ask disabled people to identify their priority issues. We have also provided financial support to disabled people’s organisations to allow them to participate directly in the CRPD reporting process.