An Eye Toward Effective Enforcement: A Technical-Comparative Approach to the Drafting Negotiations
Tara J. Melish · bepress Legal Repository · 2014
Published as Chapter 5 in Human Rights and Disability Advocacy, Maya Sabatello & Marianne Schulze, eds. The unprecedented level of civil society participation that took place in the drafting of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) constitutes a major key to its success -- laying a solid foundation for the much longer and harder process of implementation ahead. This piece addresses how one civil society organization -- Disability Rights International (DRI) -- approached the negotiation process. Part I explains the strategic approach DRI adopted, highlighting its methodology, the guiding principles it embraced, and the resulting strategies of engagement it pursued. Part II turns to some of the key substantive issues DRI focused on in its interventions and advocacy before the Ad Hoc Committee. Part III concludes with a brief reflection on the CRPD, the ultimate efficacy of DRI's approach, and the road ahead.