Human Rights and Disability A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions Two general comments of the CESCR Committee are especially relevant in relation to disability issues. The detailed and comprehensive General Comment No. 5 on the economic, social and cultural rights of persons with disabilities,164 published in 1994, was an important precursor to the UN CRPD. General Comment No. 4 on the right to adequate housing notes specifically highlights the right to accessible housing for persons with disabilities.165 The CESCR Committee has also addressed disability issues in a number of its concluding observations. In 2013, for example, the Committee concluded that the high frequency of compulsory treatment and confinement within the mental health system of persons with psychosocial disabilities in Norway, and the absence of an adequate legal framework regulating the application of coercive treatment, amounted to a violation of the right to the highest attainable standard of health.166 In 2014, the Committee expressed concern that Indonesia failed to employ a human rights approach in the way it defined ‘persons with disabilities’ in its anti-discrimination law and that the law does not specify the obligation to provide ‘reasonable accommodation’.167 In addition, the Committee noted the continuing high levels of unemployment among persons with disabilities in its recent examinations of Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Ecuador and Denmark, among others.168 It has called on States to enhance their employment policies, including in the areas of requalification, local employment initiatives, incentives and tax benefits to employers. It is clear that the CESCR Committee is now interpreting economic, social and cultural rights in ways that closely accord with the goals and principles of the UN CRPD. NHRIs working on economic, social and cultural rights can easily integrate disability perspectives into that work. 5.3. THE CONVENTION FOR THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN AND DISABILITY The issue of gender and disability – as one example of intersectionality – is explicitly covered by article 6 of the UN CRPD. It is therefore important that there is a strong resonance between the jurisprudence of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) and the CRPD Committee. The CEDAW Committee was among the first to draw attention to the intersectionality between gender and disability. As far back as 1991, the CEDAW Committee adopted its landmark General Recommendation No. 18 concerning women with disabilities and noted the double discrimination linked to “their special living conditions”.169 It affirmed the Committee’s support for the World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons and recommended that States parties provide information on women with disabilities in their periodic reports, along with measures taken to ensure equal access to education and employment, health services and social security, and to ensure that they can participate in all areas of social and cultural life. The concluding observations of the CEDAW Committee deal with many gender and disability-related issues. For example, following its examination of the periodic report from India in 2014, the Committee expressed concern that: … women with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities can be denied legal capacity and committed to institutions without their consent and without recourse to any meaningful remedy or review.170 74 164 Ibid. 165 Ibid. 166 E/C.12/NOR/CO/5, para. 19. 167 E/C.12/IDN/CO/1, para. 11. 168 Available at http://ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cescr/pages/cescrindex.aspx. 169 See www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm#recom18. 170 CEDAW/C/IND/CO/4-5, para. 36.