Enabling Refugee and IDP Law and Policy: Implications of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
![handle is hein.journals/ajicl28 and id is 407 raw text is: ENABLING REFUGEE AND IDP LAW AND POLICY: IMPLICATIONS
OF THE U.N. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH
DISABILITIES
Michael Ashley Stein* & Janet E. Lord**
I. INTRODUCTION
Some 40 million persons with disabilities worldwide are refugees or
internally displaced within their own countries.' Already highly marginalized
within their communities before forced migration,2 persons with disabilities are
exposed to increased hazards during and following flight. Nevertheless, recent
humanitarian crises demonstrate that assistance operations neither foresee nor
react to the specific needs of persons with disabilities.3 The adoption of the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and
its Optional Protocol4 has highlighted disability inclusion as a human rights issue
* Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability; Visiting
Professor, Harvard Law School; Cabell Research Professor of Law, William & Mary Law
School.
** Senior Partner, BlueLaw International, LLP; Research Associate, Harvard Law
School Project on Disability.
We thank Andrew Solomon for very thoughtful comments; Amanda DeBerry,
Kelli Falgout, and Nicole Sonia for research assistance; and staff at the United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees for background materials. We are indebted
to Matthew Smith, Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability's Bangladesh
program, for conducting the Bihari interviews featured infra Part V.B.
1. Report by the Director of UNHCR New York Office: Conference of the States
Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Sept. 3, 2010),
www.un.org/disabilities/documents/COP/COP3/Presentation/JanzSep3-2010.doc (by Udo
Janz). Although different legal frameworks and state obligations apply to the needs of
refugees and internally displaced persons, we have conflated these two categories for the
purposes of discussing equal access to various services and processes.
2. For more on the human rights of persons with disabilities generally, see Human
Rights and Persons with Disabilities, UN ENABLE, www.un.org/esalsocdev/enable/
rights/humanrights.htm (last visited Dec. 31, 2011); David W. Anderson, Human Rights
and Persons with Disabilities in Developing Nations in Africa (Paper presented at the
Fourth Annual Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conference, Nov. 13, 2004),
available at http://www4.samford.edu/lillyhumanrights/papers
/AndersonHuman.pdf.
3. See generally Janet E. Lord, Michael Waterstone & Michael A. Stein, Disability
Inclusive Development and Natural Disasters, in LAW AND RECOVERY FROM DISASTER:
HURRICANE KATRINA 71 (Robin Paul Malloy ed., 2008).
4. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, G.A. Res 61/106, U.N.
Doc A/RES/61/106 (Dec. 13, 2006) [hereinafter CRPD]; Optional Protocol to the
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, G.A. Res. 61/106, Annex II, U.N.
Doc A/RES/61/106 (Jan. 24, 2007) [hereinafter Optional Protocol]. Within the human](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ajicl28&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Enabling Refugee and IDP Law and Policy: Implications of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
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