The rights-based perspective on disability is a relatively new approach that moves away from medical and charity-based approaches (Stein, 2007: 75– 122). It is estimated that 15 per cent of the world's population live with a disability. Persons with disability have been described by the United Nations (UN) as the world's largest minority, the majority of whom live in developing countries. Women and persons with lower educational attainment are more likely to live with a disability. The UN has recently collated research on people with disabilities which highlighted that they are amongst the most disadvantaged groups in society. Indeed, children with disabilities are significantly less likely to be educated; the global literacy rate for adults with disabilities is 3 per cent; people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed; persons with disabilities are more likely to be victims of violence or rape and less likely to obtain police intervention, legal protection or preventive care; women and girls with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse; and it is estimated that violence against children with disabilities occurs at least 1.7 times more than for their non-disabled peers (United Nations, 2019). From this it is evident that human rights principles have an obvious relevance for persons with disability, yet historically the legal response has been a mix of charity, paternalism and social policy rather than a human rights approach. Consider, as an example, education policies for children with disabilities: the focus is often on specialised and segregated provision, determined on the basis of a person's disability – for example, a school for the deaf. Thus, it is the very condition of disability that separates. ‘In a way the “natural” distribution of human capacities was seen separating persons with disabilities. It was as if the disability was seen as eroding rather than simply complicating human existence’ (O’Mahony and Quinn, 2017).

That historical position has been difficult to overcome. One significant contribution of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is that it offers an international human rights instrument that questions and challenges these previously unquestioned presumptions. It should be unquestionable that human rights principles are universal in their application.