Disability rights campaigners have welcomed the UK’s ratification of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, although the government has decided to ‘opt out’ of some important parts of the Convention.

The welcome for the ratification – which came on Monday 8 June 2009 – was somewhat muted as the government has entered ‘reservations’ (or ‘opt outs’) to the UN Convention, meaning that it has not signed up to the full rights set out in the Convention on four specific areas: education, legal capacity, employment in the armed forces and immigration.

The purpose of this article is to update ECDP members and other interested people on what the UN Convention is and what it means for disabled people in Essex and beyond.

You can download the article here.