The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities organised its 31st session in Geneva from 12 August to 5 September. The Committee evaluated the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in several countries, including Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands and Ukraine. As part of this evaluation process, organisations of persons with disabilities sent their own reports. 

As a result of the evaluation, the Committee adopted recommendations for each country, which cover a variety of topics, from regressive measures adopted by countries to issues of inaccessibility, deprivation of legal capacity, the rights of women with disabilities, involuntary placement and treatment, and independent living.

For Belarus, the Committee expressed a strong position regarding the need for deinstitutionalisation and elimination of all restrictions on rights as a result of a declaration of legal incapacity or on the grounds of a person’s impairment. It also stated the need to end the torture of prisoners with disabilities.

For Belgium, it highlighted the urgency to reform the Belgian legal capacity regime to ensure everyone has the right to choose and receive adequate support, to amend or repeal the law and practices that allow for deprivation of liberty and harsher measures based on disability, and to adopt a deinstitutionalisation strategy.

For Denmark, the Committee called for a national action plan on disability, better implementation of the Convention in national law and jurisprudence, and allocation of funds in close consultation with representative organisations. Among others, it called for amending legislation to ensure that children and adolescents with disabilities cannot be placed in secure residential institutions on welfare grounds.

For the Netherlands, the Committee raised concerns about the lack of a strategy to address all articles and principles of the Convention and their uneven implementation across municipalities. It urged the Dutch government to withdraw its interpretative declaration on article 15 CRPD (freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment) and to eliminate in all laws, policies and practices all forms of medical procedure and treatment.  It also calls for comprehensive work towards a fully inclusion education system for all children.

For Ukraine, the Committee emphasized the need to adopt a human rights-based approach to disability in all its laws, policies, and decisions; it called for developing effective procedures for the involvement of persons with disabilities in all public decision-making mechanisms; it asked for increasing efforts to investigate the extrajudicial executions of persons with disabilities during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and to  ensure respect for the rights of people with disabilities in wartime.

Download the recommendations

• Recommendations to Belarus
• Recommendations to Belgium
• Recommendations to Denmark
• Recommendations to the Netherlands
• Recommendations to Ukraine