Disability Rights
Rights that are recognised internationally: The UN Disability Convention
What does the UN Disability Convention mean for disabled people in New Zealand?
The United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an important international treaty that New Zealand has signed up to.
It’s sometimes abbreviated to “UNCRPD”. In this chapter, we’ll call it “the UN Disability Convention” or “the Convention” for short.
When New Zealand signed up to the UN Disability Convention, we agreed to reform the law and do other things to put the rights in the Convention into effect. The Convention gives guidance on how to protect the rights of disabled people.
Cases: [2011] NZCA 20, [2011] 2 NZLR 171 [2015] NZSC 28, [2016] 1 NZLR 298 Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Act 2008
Because it is international law, the Convention doesn’t automatically have legal force in New Zealand. This means that you can’t go to court about your rights under the Convention directly. But the rights in the Convention are still important.
Being part of the UN Disability Convention means that:
- our government has to report regularly to a special UN Committee.
- our government has to provide protection of human rights in line with the UN Disability Convention. One of the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1993 (one of New Zealand’s main anti-discrimination laws) is that our human rights laws should be in line with relevant UN conventions. This purpose was cited by the Court of Appeal when it looked at some parts of the Human Rights Act about people and businesses providing goods and services. The Court found that the people and businesses covered by those parts of the Act had to make accommodations for disabled people, unless those accommodations were unreasonable. This is the idea of “reasonable accommodation”. For more information, see “What does ‘reasonable accommodation’ mean?”.
- Our laws should be consistent with the UN Disability Convention. After New Zealand signed up to the UN Disability Convention in 2008, parliament passed an Act that removed or changed a number of laws – mostly old ones – that were inconsistent with the Convention. For example, there was a rule in our old benefit laws (in the Social Security Act 1964) that said you could be paid a lower benefit than other people while in hospital if you weren’t able “to appreciate the payments”. This has now been changed.
- New Zealand courts can use the rights in the Convention to help them figure out how the New Zealand law applies. However, the courts can’t rely on the UN Convention to interpret the law in a way that goes against or overrides the words of the legislation.
- Decision makers, such as ministries and government departments, may need to take the rights under the UN Convention into account in making their decisions.
- New Zealand also signed up to the “Optional Protocol” to the UN Disability Convention in 2016. This means that a disabled person in New Zealand can take a case to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is different to going to the New Zealand courts about your rights under the Convention, which you can’t do (see: “Enforcing your rights under the UN Disability Convention”).
So, the UN Disability Convention is something that’s still relevant and important in the New Zealand context, even though it’s not what lawyers would describe as being “directly enforceable” in our courts. That is, even though you can’t bring a case about your rights under the Convention, it can affect how judges interpret New Zealand law.
Note: You can read or listen to the UN Disability Convention in different formats (including Te Reo Māori, EasyRead, NZSL and Audio) on Whaikaha’s website, under “About the Convention”.
