Support Systems to Ensure Community Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities

A/HRC/RES/55/8View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2024.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Subprogramme 1	Human rights mainstreaming, right to development, and research and analysis	108

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Subprogramme 1	Human rights mainstreaming, right to development, and research and analysis	108	—

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

What subjects does this mandate have?

9 subjects

Accessibility Anti-Discrimination Measures Community Participation Digital Technology Human Rights Persons with Disabilities Physical Infrastructure Resolutions and Decisions Social Policy

What’s in this document?

35 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the fact that, to date, 186 States and one regional integration organization have ratified or acceded to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and that 103 States have ratified or acceded to the Optional Protocol to the Convention, and calls upon those States and regional integration organizations that have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention and the Optional Protocol to consider doing so as a matter of priority;

Encourages States that have ratified the Convention and have submitted one or more reservations to it to initiate a process to review regularly the effect and continued relevance of such reservations, and to consider the possibility of withdrawing them;

Welcomes the reports of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on support systems to ensure community inclusion of persons with disabilities, including as a means of building forward better after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic⁴ and on good practices of support systems enabling community inclusion of persons with disabilities,⁵ and calls upon all stakeholders to consider the findings and recommendations made in those reports with a view to implementing them;

⁴A/HRC/52/52.

⁵A/HRC/55/34.

Calls upon all States to take appropriate measures to establish and implement support systems that respect, protect and fulfil human rights, and to ensure community inclusion of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others and without discrimination, applying an approach that is gender-responsive and age-sensitive, by, for example:

Ensuring the meaningful involvement of persons with disabilities, through their representative organizations, in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of care and support systems;

Establishing effective legal, policy, institutional and administrative frameworks, including non-medical disability assessments that focus on support requirements and additional costs, cross-sectoral coordination and built-in accountability mechanisms for community participation of persons with disabilities;

Measuring support and care needs through enhanced data collection and information management, including through time-use and care and support surveys that include questions relating to the disability status of persons providing and receiving care and support and persons involved in self-care;

Using various financial tools, such as tax incentives, subsidies and government-sponsored procurement policies, grants, sustainable finance, international cooperation and regulatory incentives, where appropriate, to mobilize resources and support innovative, gender-responsive, age-sensitive, disability-inclusive and human rights-based care and support systems that address the root causes of inequalities and that are not predicated on social constructs that equate disability with dependence;

Developing comprehensive social protection systems, covering disability-related extra costs and ensuring access to, for example, non-contributory cash-transfer schemes, to empower persons with disabilities in choosing their support services;

Ensuring that “support” is included in discussions and documents relating to the care economy, reflecting disability frameworks, rights and perspectives;

Investing in human rights-based support services, expanding individualized support services and strengthening community-based support networks and community resilience and sustainability;

Ensuring access to support products, such as assistive technologies, including digital and new technologies, and mobility aids to strengthen support systems for persons with disabilities, while at the same time mitigating risks relating to lack of access, discrimination, privacy, data protection, safety and transparency;

Ensuring access to available, affordable, accessible transport, including point-to-point transportation and paratransit options, and promoting innovations and offering concessions, subsidies and reduced fees, including for persons with disabilities and their support persons, in various transportation modes;

Providing flexible funding models for support services, responding to the varied needs of individuals while respecting their autonomy and choice;

Ensuring adequate, accessible and affordable housing, including through support for home acquisition, property leasing and home modifications for persons with disabilities, and infrastructure facilities that are accessible and appropriate to their needs;

Raising awareness at all levels to change attitudes regarding care and support for persons with disabilities, including through adequate education and training;

Cultivating and maintaining a skilled and diverse care and support workforce for quality support services, including by recognizing and developing the skills of unpaid care and support workers;

Ensuring that persons with disabilities and their families, including women and girls, have access to a range of support services, information in accessible formats and education, including on how to prevent, recognize and report instances of exploitation, violence and abuse, and on how to ensure that persons with disabilities, in particular children, have a safe and supportive family environment;

Also calls upon all States to take specific actions to counter disability-based structural exclusion and discrimination in the provision of care and support systems, including services, and to develop safeguards to prevent, monitor and act on violence against and abuse of persons with disabilities, especially women and girls with disabilities, children with disabilities and persons with intellectual disabilities, providing proper means to monitor, investigate and, as appropriate, prosecute perpetrators of crimes, provide redress for victims, adopt measures of non-repetition and ensure access to justice for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others, and to promote education campaigns on violence and abuse prevention;

Encourages all relevant business enterprises, in particular those involved in the provision of care and support services, to conduct human rights impact assessments to ensure maximal respect for the Convention and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, with the active involvement of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations;

Follow-up

Calls upon States to engage in international cooperation efforts at all levels to promote the establishment and implementation of human rights-based support systems to ensure the full inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in the community, and to encourage the mobilization of public and private resources on a sustainable basis to mainstream the rights of persons with disabilities in development, and invites the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant United Nations agencies, and other donor mechanisms and partnerships, to consider ways to foster international cooperation activities in that regard, in close consultation with persons with disabilities and their representative organizations;

Encourages the Office of the High Commissioner to share its technical expertise with other United Nations agencies involved with support systems, in order to promote the integration of a human rights-based approach to persons with disabilities;

Encourages States to integrate in their reports to the high-level political forum on sustainable development the advances made with regard to the rights of persons with disabilities as reflected in laws, policies and practices developed relevant to the commitments under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and to develop human rights indicators and collect data disaggregated by age, sex and disability to inform those indicators using a functional approach, such as the Washington Group short set of questions, for disaggregation;

Calls upon States to ensure that all international cooperation and humanitarian action is inclusive of persons with disabilities and does not contribute to creating new barriers for them;

Requests the Office of the High Commissioner to present an oral report to the Human Rights Council on the implementation of the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy across its programmes and operations at its fifty-ninth and sixty-second sessions, with international sign interpretation and captioning, and also requests the Office to make its report to the Secretary-General on the Strategy publicly available in an easy-to-read version and in an accessible format;

Decides that its next annual interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities will be held at its fifty-eighth session, and will focus on the rights of persons with disabilities and digital technologies and devices, including assistive technologies, and will have international sign interpretation and captioning;

Also decides to hold at its sixty-first session an interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities, which will focus on disability-inclusive infrastructure, including transport and housing, and will have international sign interpretation and captioning;

Requests the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare its next annual thematic study on the rights of persons with disabilities on the rights of persons with disabilities and digital technologies and devices, including assistive technologies, and to prepare its subsequent study on disability-inclusive infrastructure, including transport and housing, in consultation with States and other relevant stakeholders, regional organizations, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities and other relevant special procedure mandate holders, civil society organizations, including organizations of persons with disabilities, and national human rights institutions, requiring contributions to be submitted in an accessible format, and requests that such stakeholder contributions, the studies themselves and an easy-to-read-version of them be made available on the website of the Office, in an accessible format, prior to the fifty-eighth and sixty-first sessions of the Human Rights Council;

Encourages the task force on secretariat services and accessibility for persons with disabilities to report orally to the Human Rights Council on its work and on the progress made in the implementation of its accessibility plan;

Urges States to consider further integrating and mainstreaming the perspective and rights of persons with disabilities into the work of the Human Rights Council, such as by mandating international sign interpretation and captioning for all meetings of the Council;

Requests the Secretary-General to prepare and submit to the Human Rights Council, at its fifty-ninth session, a study defining the administrative procedures and budget required to make all Council resolutions accessible, including in easy-to-understand language, as accessibility resources and tools for persons with disabilities, in consultation with and ensuring the active engagement and participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, as well as relevant United Nations entities, including the Office of the High Commissioner, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, and other stakeholders such as civil society and representative organizations;

Encourages representative organizations of persons with disabilities, civil society, national mechanisms as described in article 33 of the Convention, and national human rights institutions to participate actively in the debates referred to in paragraphs 12 and 13 above and in regular and special sessions of the Human Rights Council and its working groups;

Requests the Secretary-General, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations offices to continue to work collaboratively on the progressive implementation of standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services of the United Nations system, taking into account relevant provisions of the Convention, and underlines that the Human Rights Council, including its Internet resources, should be fully accessible to persons with disabilities;

Requests the Secretary-General to continue to ensure that the work of the Office of the High Commissioner with respect to the rights of persons with disabilities and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is adequately resourced for the fulfilment of their tasks;

Decides to remain seized of the matter.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

Follow-up

Table of contents

Who cites this mandate in the budget?