About the project
The struggles by persons with disabilities for social and economic justice have been articulated increasingly within a rights framework. The most prominent expression of this strategy was the adoption in 2006 by the United Nations of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Disability rights are essential for the more than one billion persons with disabilities worldwide, eighty percent of whom live in the developing world and regularly experience material and social exclusion.
These challenges are equally present within developed countries, for example the unemployment rate in the United States among working age adults with disabilities is currently nearing eighty percent.
However, the turn towards international human rights raises a number of challenges:
- How is disability social rights accommodated within moral and political theory?
- How does disability theory dovetail with existing and potential social rights theory, jurisprudence, and practise?
- How are international disability rights and norms translated into diverse social, economic, and cultural contexts?
- What are the key obstacles and dilemmas to the implementation of disability social rights?
- What potential opportunities and restrictions might arise from pursuing justice through disability social rights?
Objectives
The book will be organized around the following three research questions:
- What are the potential and contested conceptual underpinnings between disability rights and social rights, particularly in light of debates within philosophy, law, social science, and disability studies?
- How should specific social rights be transposed within the disability context, having regard to conceptual dilemmas, methods of interpretation, relevant legal standards, and applicability in practise?
- What are the key challenges and opportunities in implementing social rights for persons with disabilities, and should and how can culture, politics, economics, development, and law be reconceived to practically secure social rights?
Cooperation
The book will be edited by Michael Stein, Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and Malcolm Langford, Research Fellow and Director, Socio-Economic Rights Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights.