CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Keravica, Rados |
|---|---|
| Title | Advancing the Right of Persons with Disabilities to Live Independently and Being Included In the Community - Taking Advantage of EU Leverage |
| Summary | This thesis research looks into the scope and the content of the right of persons with disabilities to live independently and to be included in the community as well as its state of the implementation at the level of chosen national jurisdictions – Croatia and Serbia and the European Union as the regional integration organization which has confirmed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The right to live independently and to be included in the community enshrined in Article 19 of CRPD has profound effect on the realization of all other rights set out in the CRPD and includes both civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights and engages both positive and negative obligations of the States Parties. These obligations are contained in the three core elements of Article 19: choice of the place of residence, access to disability-specific community-based services and access to services for general population. Still, there are more than 1.2 million of Europeans with disabilities being placed in the residential care settings limiting their choice and control over their own lives. People with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities are at the heightened exposure to this malpractice due to presumed mental incapacity to make autonomous life decisions. The CRPD was the first international human rights treaty concluded by the European Union and it has the status of “mixed agreement” in EU law as it is ratified both by the EU and its Member States which are sharing the competences between each other for CRPD implementation. Chapter 1 explores the scope and the content of the right to live independently and to be included in the community to develop the understanding of its hybrid nature and unique concepts it brought into international human rights law. Chapter 2 maps the current challenges in Europe in regards the implementation of Article 19 seeking to make clear the distinctions between institutional and community-based care and to map the steps needed to create CRPD-compliant response in terms of the transition from institutional to community-based care. It also proposes the set of indicators to monitor the progressive realization of Article 19. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the position of the CRPD in EU law denoting the legal effects of CRPD in EU law and mapping the obligations which the EU has under Article 19 both in relation to its Member States and the countries in accession to EU membership. Chapter 4 looks into the implementation of Article 19 in the national jurisdictions of Croatia and Serbia which are sharing the legacy of institutional care for persons with disabilities and are experiencing the similar challenges in the transition from institutional to community-based care. Both countries are sharing the experience of EU integrations – Croatia joining the EU membership in 2014 and Serbia having the status of the candidate country. The effects and the potential of EU’s policy of conditionality to advance the right to live independently are explored on the basis of these two national jurisdictions with the set of recommendations set out in the conclusion resulting from this research. |
| Supervisor | Fiala-Butora, Janos |
| Department | Legal Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/keravica_rados.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University