Disability Rights Protection under the African Human Rights System

Disability rights are in essence human rights that are enjoyed or ought to be enjoyed by persons living with disabilities (PWDs). Before the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons Living with Disabilities, international law only offered protection for the rights of PWDs in scattered instruments, rather than in one holistic convention. The same can be said regarding the protection offered by the regional block, the African Union. The purpose of this book is to examine the nature or form of disability rights, and to assess whether the African regional human rights protection mechanism adequately protects them. In other words, the study makes an attempt to understand whether the current appalling status of PWDs can be blamed on normative paucity of the African human rights system. To achieve this, the author will comb the African human rights instruments and existing jurisprudence, and based on the findings, will assess the propriety or otherwise of adopting a disability specific instrument for the continent and recommend accordingly.

Autorentext

Angelo Dube is a human rights lawyer, trained in Swaziland, South Africa and Ghana. He teaches Human Rights Law, Administrative Law and Public International Law at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Swaziland. He also founded and runs the Centre for Human Rights and Development, a non-profit which seeks to put human dignity first.