NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF KOREA Submission to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – July 2022 Article 8 Awareness Raising 8 Awareness raising of disabilities □ Current status and problems ㅇ The Act on Welfare of Persons with disabilities requires mandatory education for disability awareness-raising, and the average implementation rate for the past 4 years(2017-2020) is only 60%. In particular, out of 1,950 national institutions, 964 did not receive education.4 ㅇ There were concerns about the content of education as well because the focus is on the treatment and overcoming of disabilities and the difficulty faced by persons with disabilities are distorted as problems of failed individuals, not as institutional and environmental barriers. In addition due to expanded remote education, the problem of reduced effectiveness of education has been raised. In this regard, the Commission conducted monitoring in 2019 and informed the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the contents, and as a result, Article 16 of the Enforcement Decree of the Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities was amended(June 29, 2021) to reflect the purpose of the Convention in education for disability awarenessraising and include face-to-face education. However, reflection was not made in the workplace education to raise awareness of disabilities under the Act on the Employment Promotion and Vocational Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities. ㅇ In addition, an utterance of hate speech in politics has become a problem as the political use of hate speech appeared in the 2017 presidential election and 2018 local elections. The Commission expressed its opinion and recommended for correction regarding politicians’ remarks disparaging persons with disabilities. As politicians’ remarks have great social influence and ripple effect, special attention has to be paid, but there are still controversial remarks of politicians disparaging persons with disabilities. ㅇ The 2019 fact-finding survey by the Commission shows that families of psychosocial disabilities feel more aggravated by social discrimination and 13