Refugee resettlement and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) created pathways for people who are refugees with disabilities to resettle and build new lives. Resettlement country Australia, in response to its CRPD obligations, created greater access to the waiver of visa health requirements for humanitarian entrants. This article chronicles key documents demonstrating that the CRPD has been an effective instrument for improving access to resettlement for people with disabilities. The article also describes new challenges to Australia’s compliance with the CRPD as it fails to address multiple discrimination of people from refugee backgrounds with disabilities, an area of concern to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for which it has issued guidance. This article proposes creating a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Resettlement Submission Category for disability to improve resettlement programmes’ compliance with the CRPD.

Keywords:

• Refugee resettlement
• human rights
• disability

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Matt Piening, Sharmini Kumar, Neil Conning and Assunta Hunter for copy-editing assistance; Asher Hirsch for research assistance; her teachers in International Human Rights Law and International Refugee Law; and the reviewers from Disability and Society. All thoughts are the author’s own and not attributable to these people.

Notes

1. The UNHCR defines a ‘protracted refugee situation’ as ‘25,000 or more refugees from the same nationality have been in exile for five consecutive years or more in a given asylum country’ (2017, 20).

2. At the time of writing, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities had released a draft General Comment 6 and was receiving submissions. General Comment 6 will cover article 5, ‘Equality and non-discrimination’.

3. Holders of an Australian humanitarian visa become permanent residents after passing through Australian immigration; people in this situation are no longer refugees and, for clarity in this article, will be referred to as ‘people from refugee backgrounds’.

4. Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women; and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.