Realising Disability Rights in Non-Liberal Contexts

The Ritualistic Mobilisation of the CRPD in Singapore

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8252798
AutoresDaryl W J Yang (0000-0003-2913-2229, Yale-NUS College, autor correspondente), Daryl WJ Yang
Ano2024
Volume4
Fascículo1
Data de publicação2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal of Disability and Social Justice (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2732-4036 • E-ISSN: 2732-4044
EditoraPluto Journals (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.13169/intljofdissocjus.4.1.0034
OpenAlexW4398209936
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas22

A key innovation of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is its recognition of the critical importance of the principle of meaningful participation in realising the rights enshrined in the treaty document. Hence, the CRPD is the first human rights treaty to mandate the participation of civil society in the implementation and monitoring of the treaty. What happens, however, in a non-liberal society where human rights activism is potentially risky and lacks cultural resonance? This article turns to Singapore as a case study and analyses how one particular cross-disability representative organisation participated in the CRPD monitoring process through the ritualistic mobilisation of disability rights. This mobilisation was enabled by the CRPD’s obligations of conduct, which provide a justification for their participation in the CRPD monitoring process. Hence, the usual risks associated with human rights activism in Singapore can be mitigated because these activists are technically assisting the Singapore government in fulfilling its obligations under the treaty. Such tactics of ritualistic mobilisation are aimed ultimately at the ritualisation of disability rights, which refers to the entrenchment of the human rights model of disability policy as the dominant political paradigm through which to approach disability issues. In addition to demonstrating the impact of obligations of conduct enshrined in the CRPD on the mobilisation of disability rights, this article adds to the growing recognition in socio-legal and human rights scholarship that civil society participation and rights mobilisation may take a variety of forms, not only the more explicit or confrontational modes that feature in Western liberal democracies. It also contributes to the growing literature on disability movements in East Asian developmental welfare states by attending to how disability rights and the CRPD are mobilised in the region to realise a more just and equal society for disabled people

Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Disability Rights and Representation · Discrimination and Equality Law