Intellectually Impaired People: The Ongoing Battle - Chapter 16: The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), European Union (EU) laws, and more

The United Nations (UN) was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future wars. In 1948, it declared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1971, it adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons. In 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) came into force as an international human rights treaty. The UN is not a world government, but a stage for international diplomacy. In 2021, the EU Commission published its “Union of equality” as a strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities for 2021–30, emphasizing the aim to deliver further significant improvements to all areas of the lives of persons with disabilities within the EU and beyond. The almost uncountable number of UN declarations and the euphonious EU strategies need to be assessed not by their wording, but by their impact on reality.