Supranational human rights bodies and protecting the rights of people with disabilities in the covid-19 pandemic

This article has three aims The first is to understand the array of advice, guidance, policy briefs, statements, toolkits, briefings and press releases of supranational human rights bodies (and allied bodies such as the World Health Organization) in relation to the rights of people with disabilities in the COVID-19 pandemic The analysis is set out in nine themes that recur across the guidance and are of particular relevance to people with disabilities: information accessibility, physical distancing, social protection, rights in institutional settings, independent living, monitoring institutional settings, health, education and participation At the start of the pandemic, a group of international human rights experts called on states “to remain steadfast in maintaining a human rights-based approach to regulating this pandemic”, which inspires the second aim which is to investigate whether the supranational bodies remained sufficiently steadfast to a human rights-based approach in their response to the pandemic in relation to people with disabilities The third aim is to suggest how can these supranational bodies make sense of this inflection point to ensure that disability rights norms are implemented beyond the crisis © 2020 Thomson Reuters and Contributors