Human Rights and Disability A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions Introduction to Part I 14 15 Disability studies provide the theoretical background for what we call the shift from the medical to the social model of disability. The social model of disability was developed as a critique to the medical model of disability. However, within disability studies, the social model of disability has been almost as strongly criticized as the medical model of disability. Michael Oliver, one of the founding fathers of the social model of disability, has recently called for a halt to this criticism, unless someone can come up with a better alternative. The CRPD offers such an alternative: the human rights model of disability. It is by no means the only alternative to the social model of disability (many models have been developed, among them recently the capability approach model14), but the human rights model is an improvement on the social model of disability, and it is a tool to implement the CRPD. Theresia Degener15 Part I of this Manual aims to clarify the nature and implications of the shift to the human rights frame on disability. The move to the human rights frame is revolutionising the way people, governments and NHRIs view disability. Of course, there is nothing revolutionary in human rights. But its application to disability is still novel and indeed revolutionary, especially considering where most countries have come from. The shift from one way of thinking to another has practical implications in both policy and law. It provides a new prism though which to view reality. Facts that may not seem relevant within an old frame suddenly come to life within a new one. For example, the exclusion of children with disabilities from mainstream schooling might seem ‘natural’ under an old frame but it should strike us as unfair under a new human rights frame. A new frame can also provide us with the moral and legal tools to judge the facts as we see them. For example, the exclusion of children with disabilities from inclusive education should now register as a practice that cannot be justified. Its gives us clear norms with which to judge the facts, which we now see differently. Indeed, this new frame provides us with the normative basis for advocacy to bring about systemic reform; a blueprint for change that goes beyond seeking redress for individual violations. The move to the human rights frame entails a wholesale change in how we think about disability. Instead of making the person the ‘problem’, we are required to identify the barriers to the enjoyment of human rights facing persons with disabilities. Traditional approaches rely on outdated notions of disability that focus more on the peculiarities of the person (as medically understood) than on the barriers to their selfrealisation in the world. It follows that one of the first and most important implications of the move to the human rights frame has to do with how disability is framed in law, in public policy and in community attitudes. 8 14 S. Mitra, ‘The Capability Approach and Disability’ in Journal of Disability Policy Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2006, pp. 236-247; available at http://dps.sagepub.com/content/16/4/236. 15 T. Degener, ‘A Human Rights Model of Disability,’ in P. Blanck and E. Flynn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Disability Law and Human Rights (forthcoming).