What is the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?

The CRPD is the parent treaty of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD-OP).

The CRPD-OP is an extra agreement to the CRPD. It gives disabled people a way to make complaints when they believe their rights under the CRPD have been abused or denied. A complaint can only be examined by the UN Disability Committee if all domestic remedies have been exhausted. This means that the individual or group has followed all the correct complaints processes in their own country, and still feel that their complaint has not been resolved.

The CRPD-OP lets individuals or groups who say they have had their rights under the CRPD breached make a complaint to the UN Disability Committee. The CRPD-OP also allows the Committee to examine complaints alleging very serious and continued abuse (grave and systematic violations) of the CRPD by countries that have ratified both the CRPD and CRPD-OP.

Article 2 of the CRPD-OP sets out the rules for a complaint to be examined by the UN Disability Committee. It says:

• you must give your name or the name of your group to the UN Disability Committee

• there must be a violation (abuse) of your rights under the CRPD – for example, this means you have not been treated the same as others because of your disability or have been discriminated against because of your disability

• the same situation has not already been examined or is not being examined by the UN Disability Committee or another international body which looks into complaints when human rights have been abused

• you must first try to resolve your complaint using your national law. For example, this could mean taking your case to the highest court or bringing the complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman or the Human Rights Review Tribunal. However, if you think this would take too long or not give you the right solution to your complaint you will need to give your reasons for this to the UN Disability Committee

• your complaint of an abuse of your rights must be based on facts and be genuine

• the complaint is about something that happened after a country has ratified the CRPD-OP or something that happened before a country ratified the CRPD-OP and is still happening.