Human Rights and Disability: The Promise and the Reality

Trevor R Parmenter AM
Professor Emeritus, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney

How well Australia has met its obligations to respect the essential humanity of people living with a disability and to enable them to flourish will be discussed in the context of an overview of Australia’s obligations under various human rights instruments: from the Declaration of Human Rights (1948) tothe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006.

Trevor Parmenter will examine the intersection of the rights approach to disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).Central to the analysis will be an examination of the apparent paradox between the philosophies of self-determination, empowerment and citizenship espoused by disability advocates and the essential focus of the NDIS on consumer choice and market-driven consumer systems.