Adopted in 2006, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides an international benchmark and framework to improve the human rights of people with disabilities globally. The CRPD was developed by civil society and member countries of the United Nations to ensure that persons with disabilities enjoy the same rights as other people. The text of the CRPD was adopted on 13 December 2006, opened for signature on 30 March 2007, and came into force on 3 May 2008.

The CRPD has 50 articles altogether, which applies to and protect the rights of deaf people.

• Articles 1 to 31 are about key principles of the CRPD and the rights of persons with disabilities and the measures the governments should take to ensure, protect and promote those rights.
• Articles 32-50 are about how governments and civil society should work together to make sure all persons with disabilities get all their rights, including monitoring, reporting, the CRPD Committee, and formalities about the CRPD.

The WFD was among one of the eight largest organisations of persons with disabilities invited to participate in the process of drafting the CRPD. Beginning of 2002, the WFD forged a partnership with the UN, the International Disability Alliance and the WFD’s Country Members to lobby for the rights of deaf people within the CRPD. The WFD was instrumental in providing comments, proposals and amendments, to the articles of the CRPD. Notably, the participation of the WFD has been imperative in furthering the promotion of sign language, and bilingual and bicultural educational approach. This led to the development of five articles of the CRPD directly concerning deaf persons namely;

• Article 2 – Definition
• Article 9 – Accessibility
• Article 21 – Freedom of expression, opinion, and access to information
• Article 24 – Education
• Article 30 – Participation in cultural life, recreation leisure and sport

Our philosophy and approach are based on and driven by the CRPD. Since the enforcement of the CRPD in 2008, the WFD continues to actively advocate and promote deaf issues and perspectives in the various forums of the UN.

• Australia: Australian Sign Language (Auslan)
• Belgium: Flemish Sign Language
• Canada: summaries of the CRPD available in ASL and in LSQ
• Denmark: Danish Sign Language samples (full translation available in DVD only)
• Germany: German Sign Language
• Portugal: Portuguese Sign Language
• Sweden: Swedish Sign Language
• Russia: Russian Sign Language
• Serbia: Serbian Sign Language

If your country has national sign language translation(s) of the CRPD that is not on the list, please inform us with a link at info@wfd.fi

Read the full text of the CRPD here.