On June 15th, from 11:30am to 12:45pm US Eastern time, HPOD will host a virtual side event at the 16th Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on Article 11, which addresses “Situations of Risk and Humanitarian Emergencies.” CRPD Article 11 expressly obligates States Parties to protect persons with disabilities consistently with their obligations originating in complementary domains of international law, including, but not limited to, those found in international criminal law (ICL), international humanitarian law (IHL), and international refugee law (IRL).
Sponsored by the Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Finland and Poland, a side event will focus on how ICL, IHL, and IRL frameworks are impacted and informed by the obligation to provide protection and accountability for persons with disabilities in situations of risk as established by CRPD Article 11, acknowledged by the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities (UN SR), and reiterated by UN Security Council resolution 2475 and Sustainable Development Goal 16. Panelists will set out the vision of resolution 2475 and the role States have taken in supporting that agenda, as well as considering the implications of research in advancing the work of States and the UN SR, and the CRPD Committee on the wider peace and security agenda. This event aims to present concrete recommendations for integrating a disability perspective into the fields of ICL, IHL, and IRL to address the impunity and accountability gap for disability-based crimes and persecution, as well as gaps in ensuring that climate action and disaster risk reduction are disability-inclusive.
This event builds on HPOD’s ground-breaking legal research and analysis on the complementarity of CRPD Article 11 and its co-applicability and thereby developing innovative approaches to utilizing IHL, ICL, and IRL frameworks to provide protection and accountability for persons with disabilities prior to, during, and after armed conflict and humanitarian crisis. This research has led to the publication of seminal articles on the prosecution of crimes against persons with disabilities as crimes against humanity and war crimes, respectively, in the American Journal of International Law and International Review of the Red Cross, as well as how the existing IRL regime might accommodate claims grounded in disability-related persecution, in the Virginia Journal of International Law.
Live CART captioning will be provided. A captioned video recording will be uploaded to HPOD’s website following the event.
Agenda:
- Opening remarks
- Pekka Puustinen, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland
- Joanna Skoczek, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations
- Sara Minkara, Special Advisor on International Disability Rights, U.S. Department of State
- Gerard Quinn, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- Panel discussion moderated by Michael Ashley Stein, Executive Director, HPOD; Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School
- Janet Lord, Senior Legal Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Senior Associate, HPOD; and Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland School of Law
- Sadiq Mohibi, former Victim Assistance / Disability Advisor to UN Mine Action Services and former Disability Rights Protection Officer at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
- Rosemary Kayess, Vice Chair, CRPD Committee; Senior Research Fellow, University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre
- William Pons, Senior Legal Adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Fellow, HPOD; Academic Fellow, University of Geneva; and Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland School of Law
- Q&A session moderated by Professor Michael Ashley Stein
- Concluding remarks by Emina Ćerimović, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch’s Disability Rights Division
Co-sponsors:
- Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations
- Permanent Mission of Luxembourg to the United Nations
- New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations
- U.S. Mission to the United Nations
- U.S. International Council on Disabilities
- U.S. Institute of Peace
- Human Rights Watch
- International Disability Alliance
- UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
