Part I The concepts: The human rights framing of disability The seemingly arid topic of the definition of disability is actually at the heart of the new framing. A new, non-medical approach has symbolic significance because it promotes the understanding that ‘people are not problems’. Instead, people with disabilities have rights and their problems, such as they are, are located elsewhere. It also has practical significance as it keeps legislators, bureaucrats, service providers and others focused on these barriers and, hopefully, finding solutions to them. Chapter 1 looks at the shift to the human rights frame and the implications for how law and policy understand and define disability. There has, of course, been a succession of ideas that preceded the ‘human rights’ frame; from the ‘medical model’ of disability to the ‘social model’ of disability with its emphasis on equality of opportunities. The ‘social model’ was further developed into to a fuller ‘human rights’ model, which is explained below. Needless to say, NHRIs should be natural champions for this new framing of disability. Chapter 2 looks at the process of change demanded by the move to the human rights frame. As noted in the introduction to this Manual, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities does not create any new rights. Instead it seeks to make the protection and enjoyment of existing human rights available on an equal basis to persons with disabilities. This commitment to genuine equality is front and centre in the Convention. Equality demands that people with disabilities are treated with dignity and respect; that their voice is central in all matters affecting them; that their right to live independently and in the community is assured; that all preparatory processes for active citizenship, including education, are open and inclusive; that all access barriers to participating in their communities are systematically removed; that social supports actually support people with disabilities, not entrap them; and that any process of change is accompanied by a shift in community attitudes and understanding, which is both a precondition for change and a factor that helps sustain it. Students with a disability at a primary school in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. The class is part of a pilot program for inclusive education. Photo by Connor Ashleigh for AusAID, reproduced under a CC BY 2.0 license 9