Safeguarding the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities: An Analytical Approach

The link between disability and human rights has been well established after the world adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol. For a long time, it was assumed that a person is born with a disability due to his past karma. The persons with disabilities not only suffer from the agony of being physically handicapped, but also suffers from the malice of being socially handicapped. They also face adjustment problems of different nature. They have to suffer from the feeling of insecurity, both physical and emotional. The biased or false notions about disability in the mind of a common man, deprive a disabled person of his right to live meaningful life, which results in deep mental anguish, physical discomfort, aversion, ridicule and scorn of the able-bodied, which escalates emotional problems. The world community has brought a variety of policies and conventions to ameliorate the living conditions of persons with disabilities, still there is something lacking probably the mindset of the society to accept and respect the persons with disabilities. As Supreme Court of India observed in the case of National Federation of Blinds, U.P. v. State of U.P. that ‘the problems on disability are mere syndrome, the root causes are inherent in mass poverty, social segregation and illiteracy. The only permanent solution of disability problem, which a handicapped person faces, could be their psycho-social and economic integration and proper placement which will enable them to stand on their own with dignity and decency.” The present paper tries to trace the international attempts and their compliance to address various issues and challenges in India with a newly enacted law RPWD Act, 2016 which repealed the PWD Act, 1995. The paper also analyses the decadal growth of population as per census 2011.