Disabled People's Rights

In the UK, human rights are protected by international human rights treaties -  such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - and in domestic law - such as the Human Rights Act 1998.

However, some groups of people face more barriers to having their rights met than others. For disabled people, this can look like physical barriers such as buildings without wheelchair access, financial barriers such as not having enough income to meet the costs of work, support or care, and cultural barriers such as stigma or abuse.

For groups whose rights are most at risk, additional human rights treaties have been created to address these barriers. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) protects the human rights of disabled people.

The most recent treaty monitoring cycle for CRPD concluded in August 2023.

UKIM's 2023 report is a follow-up review of its 2016 inquiry into disabled people’s rights to independent living, employment and standard of living in the UK. It highlights increasing poverty rates, affecting disabled people’s right to live independently at home, forcing some into hospital or residential care.

At this time, the Commission also published a supplementary report, commissioned from the Scottish Independent Living Coalition (SILC), which draws directly from disabled people’s lived experiences and demonstrates the urgent need for action.

Additionally, we wrote to the Economic, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee and the  Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees to notify them of our findings upon submission. After the UN Committee published its final report in April 2024, we sent follow up correspondence, again highlighting our concerns, to

• Economic, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
• the Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees
• Learning Disability Cross Party Group

Read the letters, and all other Commission publications relating to disabled people's rights in the resources section below.

The first UN Committee review of the UK's implementation of CRPD was in March 2017. Ahead of that review, UKIM published a report in 2016, which found a series of areas where disabled people's rights were not being fully protected and realised in Scotland.

Since then,  the Commission - as part of UKIM - have submitted regular reports to the United Nations Committee for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

An updated report was submitted to the UN CRPD Committee in July 2017.

We made an animation explaining our 2017 report to the UN, and the issues covered in it: you can see it on YouTube here. A script with descriptions of the video can be read here.