People with disabilities are one of the most vulnerable social groups, often among the poorest people, without opportunities to work and fully participate in society, creating barriers to their well-being. Despite the fact that there has always been an awareness of their special needs, they have been considered as objects of charity in need of social assistance and health care. It was only after the Second World War that active development for the rights of persons with disabilities began, namely within the framework of the United Nations, which played a major role with the drafting of non-binding declarations such as the Declaration on the Rights of the Mentally Retarded Persons and the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons and later the adoption of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, which paved the way for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as the first internationally legally binding instrument on the rights of persons with disabilities.
At its essence, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities seeks to change the way persons with disabilities are accepted in society and is a response by the international community to discrimination and societal attitudes towards persons with disabilities, and it also provides the basis for the establishment of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, whose most important function is to consider communications from individuals or groups and to issue general comments. Despite the criticism and the non-legally binding nature of the opinions issued, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities play a key role in the protection of the rights of persons with disabilities, both in the international sphere and in the European arena, since their creation and functioning have influenced the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, which have not been able to ignore the fact that there is a new catalogue of the rights of persons with disabilities.
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