ABSTRACT
In 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to “promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.” Adoption of the CRPD marked and seeded a political and cultural shift by and for people living with impairment, representing an express and legally potent recognition that the presence of a physical or mental impairment should not diminish human dignity or access to opportunity. In large measure, adoption of the CRPD was monumental. For much of history, and throughout much of the world, laws and societal practices have systematized the mistreatment and isolation of individuals living with physical or intellectual impairments. With its promise of inclusion, respect, and dignity, adoption of the CRPD marked significant progress in a decades-long struggle for legally enforceable human rights protections by and on behalf of persons living with physical, mental, and intellectual impairments. Yet a decade later, the CRPD’s effects are neither as pervasive nor as concrete as proponents had envisioned.
