The Right to Education of Persons with Disabilities

A/HRC/RES/25/20View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2014.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Extracted automatically from each entity’s budget submission.

What subjects does this mandate have?

8 topics

Accessibility Anti-Discrimination Measures Community Participation Educational Policy Equal Opportunity Persons with Disabilities Report Preparation Right to Education

What does this mandate say?

32 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the fact that, to date, 158 States have signed and 141 States and one regional integration organization have ratified or acceded to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and that 92 States have signed and 79 States have ratified or acceded to the Optional Protocol to the Convention, and calls upon those States and regional integration organizations that have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention and the Optional Protocol to consider doing so as a matter of priority;

Encourages States that have ratified the Convention and have submitted one or more reservations to it to initiate a process to review regularly the effect and continued relevance of such reservations, and to consider the possibility of withdrawing them;

Welcomes the thematic study on the right of persons with disabilities to education prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and calls upon all stakeholders to consider the findings and recommendations of the study;

Calls upon States to ensure free birth registration for persons with disabilities, including free or low-fee late birth registration, by means of universal, accessible, simple, expeditious and effective registration procedures, without discrimination of any kind;

Urges States to take effective measures to address and prevent all forms of violence and bullying against persons with disabilities, in particular in and around schools, other learning facilities and the community, including by putting in place inclusive and effective child protection measures that have adequate links to schools;

Also urges States to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women and girls with disabilities and to promote gender equality, in order to ensure their full participation and equal enjoyment of their rights, in particular in the field of education;

Calls upon States that are not yet party to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully enjoy the right to education without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity, and encourages them to transition to an inclusive education system, to enrol new students in such a system and to provide opportunities for life-long learning, taking into account and respecting the unique needs of different disability constituencies;

Calls upon States parties to adopt and implement appropriate measures, including legislative measures, to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy the right to education without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity by ensuring an inclusive education system at all levels and life-long learning, in accordance with the Convention, and urges States parties in furtherance of this objective to, inter alia:

Make primary education compulsory and available free to all children;

Adopt inclusive education laws and policies that prohibit rejection from the general education system on the basis of disability and guarantee continuity in education on an equal basis;

Modify or abolish laws and policies that discriminate against or have the effect of excluding students from the general education system on the basis of disability;

Accommodate the different needs and ways of learning of all students and by taking a student-centred approach;

Ensure reasonable accommodation of the individual’s requirements, providing the support required, within the general education system, to facilitate their effective education, as well as provide effective individualized support measures in environments that maximize academic and societal development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion, including by allocating sustained and adequate financial resources;

Recognize, promote and facilitate the use of sign languages and other appropriate modes and means of communication for the individual that maximize academic and social development and participation, in accordance with article 24, paragraph 3 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;

Adopt positive and other measures to include persons with disabilities in general tertiary education, vocational training, general adult education and continuing education programmes and funding opportunities, particularly for those who have been excluded from primary and secondary education, without discrimination and on an equal basis with others;

Encourages States and relevant institutions to provide ongoing professional training, teacher qualification programmes and capacity-building for education personnel on inclusive education, training for sign language teachers and interpreters, and teacher training for persons with disabilities;

Urges States to take measures to eliminate accessibility barriers to education, including those related to physical, linguistic, communication, sensory, technology, transportation and information access, including in remote, isolated or rural areas;

Encourages all relevant actors in the design of products, environments, programmes and services relating to education to pay due attention to universal design and to universal design for learning, which requires consideration of the needs of all members of society in order to avoid the need for any subsequent adaptation or specific design;

Urges States to consult closely with and actively involve persons with disabilities and their representative organizations in designing, implementing, evaluating and monitoring policies and programmes relating to educational matters;

Encourages States and invites other relevant stakeholders, including national monitoring mechanisms, to collect appropriate information, including disability-specific and gender-specific statistical and research data, to enable the formulation and implementation of inclusive education policies;

Also encourages States to develop measurable goals on inclusive quality education and to promote their monitoring through indicators, including disability-specific indicators;

Further encourages States to create or strengthen relevant monitoring or complaint mechanisms that, inter alia, promote, protect and monitor the implementation of the right to education for persons with disabilities;

Recognizes the importance of international cooperation and its promotion in support of national efforts to promote the rights of persons with disabilities, including the right to education of persons with disabilities without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity, and in this regard encourages the mobilization of public and private resources on a sustainable basis to mainstream disability in development at all levels, and underlines the need to promote and strengthen international cooperation at all levels, and the exchange of good practices and partnerships for disability-inclusive development;

Calls upon States to ensure that all international cooperation is inclusive of persons with disabilities and does not contribute to creating new barriers for them;

Encourages States and intergovernmental organizations to consider becoming party to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled;

Decides to continue to integrate the rights of persons with disabilities into its work, in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 7/9 of 27 March 2008, and invites States to consider the possibility of establishing a special procedures mandate on the rights of persons with disabilities within 2014;

Also decides that its next annual interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities will be held at its twenty-eighth session, from within existing resources, and that it will focus on article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on living independently and being included in the community, and will have international sign interpretation and captioning;

Requests the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare its annual study on the rights of persons with disabilities on article 19 of the Convention on living independently and being included in the community, from within existing resources and in consultation with States and other relevant stakeholders, regional organizations, the Special Rapporteur on Disability of the Commission for Social Development, civil society organizations, including organizations of persons with disabilities, and national human rights institutions, requiring contributions to be submitted in an accessible format, and requests that such stakeholder contributions, and the study and an easy-to-read-version of it, be made available on the website of the Office, in an accessible format, prior to the twenty-eighth session of the Human Rights Council;

Encourages organizations of persons with disabilities, national monitoring bodies and human rights institutions to participate actively in the debate referred to in paragraph 20 above, as well as in regular and special sessions of the Human Rights Council and its working groups;

Requests the Secretary-General to continue to ensure that the work of the Office of the High Commissioner with respect to the rights of persons with disabilities and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are adequately resourced for the fulfilment of their tasks;

Invites the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to consider the discussion of article 19 of the Convention on living independently and being included in the community, according to its mandate;

Requests the Secretary-General, the High Commissioner and United Nations offices to continue the progressive implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services of the United Nations system, also taking into account relevant provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and underlines that the Human Rights Council, including its Internet resources, should be fully accessible to persons with disabilities.

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