In May 2008 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force. However, the lack of expertise on how to plan and execute policies and strategies that actively promote the rights of persons with disabilities both now, and for the future, remains a major challenge.

In response to this shortage of policy role models, the World Future Council, together with the Essl Foundation, reached out to all the UNCRPD Committee members, to international organizations and to disability rights experts, for nominations of policies that protect the rights of persons with disabilities.

Amongst the 18 laws nominated, eight policies have been chosen in a multilevel selection process. The international policy examples selected concern the most pressing issues Europe’s stakeholders will need to address: anti-discrimination; supported decision-making; education; access to justice; and independent living.

With the aim to speed up political action to ensure the full enjoyment of all human rights by all persons with disabilities, the policies were presented and discussed with parliamentarians, representatives from academia, NGOs and foundations, at the International Conference on “Good Policies for Persons with Disabilities” on 22-23 January 2012 in Vienna (programme).

For more information about the selected policies visit www.zeroproject.org, where the Zero Report is available for free and where a social networking forum on good policies has been established. As well, feel free to contact Ingrid Heindorf, our Policy Officer for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.