AGE contributes to joint briefing on discrimination faced by persons with disabilities in the EU

Joining forces to 11 other organisations, we have contributed to a briefing to inform the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities about issues of inequality and intersectional discrimination faced by persons with disabilities.

The endorsing organisations are alarmed by the rate of discrimination faced by persons with disabilities in all their diversity in Europe. The EU has not taken enough measures to address equality and non-discrimination in its legislation and policies, and in particular to address intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination.

In particular, the EU is yet to:

• Adopt legislation and policies to prevent and combat discrimination on all grounds and in all areas of life
• Adopt legislation and policies to prevent and combat hate speech and hate crime, including based on disability and other grounds
• Ensure that Equality Bodies are protected by standards that among others, harmonise the mandate of equality bodies so that they can adequately and efficiently combat disability-based discrimination and support victims of unequal treatment
• Adopt intersectional policies and targeted measures against intersectional discrimination

The organisations recommend that the CRPD Committee request information on those issues and pay particular attention to the diversity of persons with disabilities in its List of issues prior to report and Concluding observations.

The briefing looks in more depth on the issue of multiple discrimination, namely at the intersection between disability and young and old age, gender, sexual orientation, race.

We have contributed to the section on older people with disability (on pp.15-17)

Access the briefing here