The Government reported to the UN on their work to promote the rights of people with disabilities in November 2011 and will be examined on this in 2014. We would like to see the rights of women with disabilities included in this process. We will also feed this into the CEDAW shadow reporting process.
You can send your evidence straight to WRC who will make a joint submission to ensure these issues are included in the shadow report. It would be valuable if as many people as possible can contribute to hold the government to account and make sure we feedback on the most important issues affecting women living with disabilities in the UK.
About the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)
The UK signed up to CRPD in 2007 and ratified it in 2009. The UK Government’s first state report was submitted in 2011, outlining the situation for disabled people in the UK today. Charities, community groups and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can submit ‘shadow reports’ that will be read alongside the state report and may provide more information that may not have been included by the state.
The state report for CRPD has been written by The
Office for Disability Issues and the main NGO shadow report for the UK is being written by
Disability Rights Watch UK. A Northern Irish shadow report is being written by
Disability Action.
A delegation from the UK will be asked about their report by a monitoring committee in 2014. The
monitoring committees for other UN human rights treaties often base their questions and recommendations on the shadow reports they receive from NGOs, so it is an important opportunity to have your questions asked by the UN.
Comment on the Government report
You can feed your ideas and evidence on disabled women into the shadow report by emailing them to
us or directly to
Disability Rights Watch. Information on the shadow report and how to contribute is available at
Disability Rights Watch.
For more information on the Northern Irish report, please visit the relevant pages of Disability Action's
website.
WRC have published a short introduction to the UN Convention and our initial thoughts on the UK Government report:
CRPD Shadow Report
WRC are feeding in to the CRPD shadow report and we would like your ideas about which topics are most important for us to discuss. Some areas we would like more information on are the experiences of lesbian and trans women with disabilities, women’s experiences of immigration, disabled women in prison and women’s maternal and mental health concerns.
Also, if you know of any case studies surrounding the sterilisation of disabled women, then please do send them to us, because we find the lack of transparency in this area very concerning.
Our template for sending us information for a submission to the CRPD shadow report is linked below, outlining the kind of information we are looking for. This will then also be used to feed into the
shadow report to CEDAW - due in 2012 - to ensure a comprehensive representation of women with disabilities in the UK to the UN.
Please let us know if you have any questions and return your responses to shadowreport@wrc.org.uk
Read an article about how CEDAW and the CRPD can work together.