What is ‘disability’? Who are ‘persons with disabilities’? What entitlements
are legitimate and relevant in relation to ‘disability’? The Convention on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted by the UN in
2006, provides answers to these questions. The answers have a dual heritage:
International human rights law on the one side, and different models
of disability developed within disability research and activism on the other.
In this study, Anna Bruce explores the CRPD and its ideological antecedents
through a comparative analysis of this convention, the negotiations
that preceded it, four different models of disability (ICIDH, the Social
Model of Disability, ICF and the Minority Group Model of Disability),
and critical points that have been made against these models.
Through this comparison, Bruce illuminates central choices that were
made in the negotiations and their effects for which entitlements are protected
for whom, as well as the challenges facing the monitoring and implementation
of the CRPD, with a particular focus on the right to health.
There is an ambiguous relationship between the right to health in human
rights law, and the model which had the strongest influence on the negotiations
of the CRPD: the Social Model of Disability. This book shows that
while there is considerable common ground between the CRPD and the
Social Model of Disability, the former departs from the latter on central
points, which has implications for the monitoring and implementation of
the right to health. In conclusion, Bruce argues that the relationship between
the Social Model of Disability and the right to health needs to be
clarified in order for this right to materialise equally for the entire constituency
of the CRPD.
Anna Bruce is an international lawyer at Lund University. This book is
her PhD dissertation.