International Disability Rights Law and Policy Book Published by the U.S. Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (http://www.dredf.org)
The nearly 500 page text, Disability Rights Law and Policy: International and National Perspectives (Transnational Publishers, 2002) analyzes the legal, social and policy changes wrought by disability community advocacy work around the world during the past quarter century.
Disability leaders--attorneys, policy advocates, and grassroots activists--are striving to advance an international human rights and anti-discrimination agenda based in the rule of law for the more than 600 million people with disabilities around the world. More than 40 nations have enacted some form of disability legislation since the passage of the groundbreaking Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, which served as a beacon to activists and advocates internationally, yet law and policy experts and Advocates have had access to few resources for international work on legal theories, practical implementation issues, and strategies for reform.
Disability Rights Law and Policy opens with a comparative survey of international, regional, and national disability law reform. Other essays cover the ideal of justice that underlies anti-discrimination law as an approach to disability, the conflict between charitable and rights-based social models of disability, the emerging right under international and U.S. law to community integration for people with disabilities living in institutions, current challenges to effective enforcement of disability anti-discrimination laws and policies, and an assessment of accessibility achievements under the ADA. The book looks at grassroots organizing and coalition building, the proposed United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and international development and civil society.
This transnational approach in Disability Rights Law and Policy focuses on ensuring that disability is recognized as a human and civil rights issue rather than only a matter of welfare or rehabilitation. Globally, the authors argue, there needs to be an attitude change that removes disability from the traditional realm of individual "human interest" to the more political realm of social prejudices and systemic problems that threaten the aspirations and potential of people with disabilities.
For further information, check the website: www.dredf.org
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