Rights that are recognised internationally: The UN Disability Convention
Overview
What does the Disability Convention mean for disabled people in New Zealand?
Case: [2011] NZCA 20 Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Act 2008
The United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an important internation treaty that New Zealand 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.
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 stated purposes of the Human Rights Act 1993 (New Zealand’s main anti-discrimination law) is that our human rights laws should be in line with relevant UN conventions. This purpose was cited by the Court of Appeal, who thought that it placed a duty on employers, shops, universities and so on to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people have equal access. This is the idea of “reasonable accommodation,” which the judges drew from the Human Rights Act.
- 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 if you weren’t able “to appreciate the payments”. This has now been changed.
New Zealand also signed up to the “Optional Protocol” in 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 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the UNCRPD) in different formats on the Office for Disability Issues website, here (or go to odi.govt.nz and select “Disability Convention”).
