Disability Rights Defenders is a network of individuals and organizations with an interest in disability rights and disability law. Our purpose is to spread and deepen legal expertise about disability rights among disabled persons, disabled people’s organization, lawyers and law schools. We invite people interested in disability rights to join our closed facebook-group “Disability Rights Defenders” to share their experiences, methods and advice. Content shared in the facebook-group is summarized in a newsletter at least once a year. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
Together we spread information and knowledge on how to use the law as a tool to implement and defend the rights of disabled people. We welcome contributions in the form of brief descriptions of legal cases, court decisions, references to legislation, publications, reports as well as announcements of events, learning and funding opportunities.
Are you looking for Disability Rights Defenders Sweden? Go to https://drds.se/.
Teodor Mladenov, Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee and Coordinator of ENIL’s Independent Living Research Network
This article is part of a special issue on Personal Assistance (PA) of the Disability Rights Defenders Newsletter published by the Independent Living Institute.
In this edition of the DRD newsletter you are invited to save the date for the CRPD COSP and the ENIL/DRD side event. You can also read several articles on the theme of or around deinstitutionalisation in the EU context with the ENIL comparison between care and personal assistance, the Swedish context with ILIs DI paper and an account of a loss of social services and the lack of choice in living arrangements and lastly on personal assistance in the Norwegian context:
Annika's daughter forced to move to group housing - "An abuse".
Battle for future personal assistance in Norway is an English version of the Norwegian article published on the webpage of AssistansKoll
Won Finnish case against discrimination of disabled people and the libert
This document was co-created in May 2022 by Teodor Mladenov (University of Dundee), Jim Elder-Woodward (Scottish Independent Living Coalition), Mari Siilsalu (Independent Living Institute), Ines Bulic Cojocariu (European Network on Independent Living), Nadia Hadad (European Network on Independent Living), and Lilia Angelova-Mladenova (European Network on Independent Living).
The UN CRPD Committee found that the fact that the relevant domestic authorities in Finland rejected the author’s application for personal assistance on the basis of resource criteria is indirect discrimination against persons with intellectual disabilities as it had the effect of impairing or nullifying the author’s enjoyment and exercise of the right of living independently and being included in the community on an equal basis with others, in violation of his rights under article 5 (1) and (2) read alone and in conjunction with article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Di
This meeting is a follow up from the Nordic network meeting in November 2020. Representation is confirmed from Estonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
On the agenda:
Please confirm attendance to me by January 22, 2022 – Jamie.bolling@independentliving.org . Welcome!
Jamie Bolling
Disability Rights Defenders (DRD) / ‘IL Nordic Network’ is a project of Independent Living Institute (ILI)[1]. This report summarizes the activities, results and outcome of DRD from September 2020 to June 2021.
The ILI projects Disability Rights Defenders and Article 19 as a tool together with the ENIL - the European Network on Independent Living held a webinar on "Legal remedies through strategic litigation for the rights of disabled people"on the 17th of November 2020. The recording of the webinar can be watched on youtube.
Disability Rights Defenders is in its third year now and in this current project period we put our focus on the Nordic countries. Therefore DRD held a kick-off meeting on the 5th of November, 14.00 - 17.00, to discuss the future development of the network and potential co-operations in the Nordic. The recording of the meeting can be found here.
Key speakers were Adolf Ratzka and Vibeke Melstrom who shared their point of view and vision as a basis for a discussion on what is needed and how the network should develop in general. Together with the 40 participants we discussed the Nordic focus, how and with whom to co-operate etc. To get some ideas we heard some voices from different Nordic countries about the situation and what is needed in their countries. The meeting was moderated by Jamie Bolling, director of ILI. The following report summarizes shortly the highlights of the DRD Kick-off meeting.
