2020 Pandemic and Refugees with Disabilities

Abstract

The first 6 years of the work of the CRPD Committee forms the backdrop of this chapter. Its focus turns to the 2020 pandemic and refugees with disabilities. The pandemic showed that persons with disabilities were a vulnerable population. Article 11 of the CRPD applies to emergencies. The work of the UN Special Rapporteur on disability and of the Australian Government is noted. Refugees with disabilities are sometimes forgotten. The obligations in the CRPD extend to all persons resident in a country. Research is unpacked which shows that 15% of refugees have disabilities, and that protective measures are essential.My premature birth took place in Melbourne, Australia, some 71 years ago. The use of pure oxygen to save my life caused me to be blind from birth. I suffer from retrolental fibroplasia, which is better known as retinopathy of prematurity (Brown, Establishing proof. Washington Post, 2005). My career was in legal academia, which culminated with my appointment in 1993 as Professor of Labor Law at the University of Sydney. This was the first occasion in which a totally blind person was appointed to a full professorship in any field at any Australian or New Zealand university. From 2002 to 2007, I undertook my 5-year term as Dean of Law at the University of Sydney (McCallum, Born at the right time: A memoire. Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2019).My work in the field of disability was largely concerned with the welfare of blind and vision impaired Australians. For example, in February 2006, I was appointed to the Board of Vision Australia which assists blind and vision impaired Australians. My term concluded in October 2015. However, after Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on 17 July 2008, the Australian Government asked if I would stand as a candidate for election to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee) which monitors the implementation of the CRPD. At the United Nations headquarters in New York on 3 November 2008, I was elected as an inaugural member of the CRPD Committee and served for 6 years until my mandate concluded on 31 December 2014. (I was initially elected for a 2-year term in accordance with article 34(7) of the CRPD and was subsequently elected for a further term of 4 years on 1 September 2010.) It was my honor to serve as the Chair of the CRPD Committee from February 2010 to April 2013. When my period as Chairperson concluded, I remained a Vice-Chairperson of the CRPD Committee until the end of my mandate. It was a further honor to be the Chairperson of the Committee of the Chairpersons of the United Nations Human Rights Committees from July 2011 to June 2012. The early years of the CRPD Committee gave me a broader perspective of the plight of persons with disabilities throughout the world. It was a privileged position because I was able to read reports and participate in constructive dialogues where the day-to-day difficulties confronting persons with disabilities in many countries were revealed and discussed. During my tenure as Chairperson, the first constructive dialogue with Tunisia took place in 2011 (CRPD, Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Concluding observations on the initial report of Tunisia, fifth sess, UN Doc CRPD/C/TUN/CO/1, 2011), and in the following year, there was a fruitful constructive dialogue with the People’s Republic of China (CRPD, The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Concluding observations on the initial report of China including Hong Kong and Macao, eighth sess, UN Doc CRPD/C/CHN/CO/1, 2012 (China)). Also, in 2012, the first complaint under the Optional Protocol to the CRPD was determined (MH v Sweden). The Optional Protocol to the CRPD entered into force for Australia on 20 September 2009.In 2014, the CRPD Committee published its first two general comments on article 12 on equal recognition before the law (CRPD, GC No 1) and on article 9 concerning accessibility (CRPD, GC No 2).