ABSTRACT
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on 13 December 2006 and came into force on 3 May 2008. This marked the culmination of a long struggle, led by the international disability movement (IDM), for a legally binding international treaty that would promote and protect the rights of disabled people to participate in society on an equal basis with others. The CRPD represents a landmark achievement for the disability movement, reflecting a growing understanding that, despite the prior existence of international human rights treaties that implicitly included disabled people, as well as a number of non-binding agreements and declarations on disability, disabled people around the world continued to experience widespread discrimination and a lack of respect for their human rights.
