The rights of children with disabilities: Australia’s double failure – Webinar Recording

Australia reported to the UN Committees on the Rights of the Child, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities during the second half of 2019. Both Committees highlighted concerns about the rights of children with disabilities and made recommendations relevant to Commonwealth and State governments. The recommendations reflected the intersectionality between the CRC and the CRPD.

Chair of the CRPD Committee, Rosemary Kayess engaged with the Committees’ concerns, namely Australia's double failure on children’s rights and rights of persons with a disability, including the lack of adequate national planning to protect the rights of children with disabilities, the use of medication to control behaviour, forced sterilisation, discrimination in schools, detention and restraint of children with disabilities, inadequacies in the National Disability Insurance scheme, the detention of children of asylum seekers with disabilities, and the continuing removal from their families of Indigenous children with disabilities.

Adding a personal perspective, Julie Charlton completed the picture by outlining the challenges directly experienced by young people with disabilities in Australia.