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Closing the Justice Gap for Women with Intellectual and/or Psychosocial Disabilities
Petra Angelina is a self-advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities. Photo: UN Women/Lauren Rooney
Closing the Justice Gap Project
With a justice gap affecting 5.1 billion people, enhancing women's access to justice necessitates a considerable rethink. It is crucial to improve existing and co-create new people-centered, inclusive, and gender-responsive justice mechanisms. This begins with understanding the legal issues faced by women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. In 2022, UN Women launched the closing the Justice Gap project, which included legal needs surveys in Nepal, Fiji, the Philippines, and Indonesia, of women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. This pioneering global initiative was led by a research team from the University of Galway and co-produced with persons with disabilities. The research project, offers significant new data on the justice gap for women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in Asia and the Pacific and provides robust, evidence-based recommendations to close it.
Did you know? A few findings from the Closing the Justice Gap Legal Needs Survey
Source: Based on survey results from the UN Women Legal Needs Survey for Women with Intellectual and/or Psychosocial Disabilities in Asia-Pacific.
Read our knowledge products from the Closing the Justice Gap for Women with Intellectual and Psychosocial Disabilities Research:
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The importance of decision-making
Persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities are often excluded by law from independently claiming their rights due to lack of legal capacity.
Learn more about legal capacity and the Supported Decision-Making model.
Legal capacity refers to the ability of an individual to exercise their rights and responsibilities under the law. For women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, legal capacity is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it enables them to make decisions about their own lives, including choices about health care, finances, and personal relationships. This autonomy is fundamental to their dignity and self-determination. Secondly, legal capacity ensures that they can access justice and legal protection. Without this, they are vulnerable to abuse, discrimination, and exclusion from society.
What is legal capacity?
Legal Capacity for All (2021) was originally published by the United Nations Human Rights
To address the justice gap for women with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities, it is essential to reimagine the decision-making process within the justice sphere. One key alternative to traditional legal capacity clauses for persons with disabilities is the "Supported Decision-Making" (SDM) model. This approach, which has garnered significant global support, offers a more inclusive and empowering way to ensure that women with disabilities have a voice and agency in legal matters. SDM emphasizes collaboration and support, enabling these women to make informed decisions while maintaining their autonomy and rights.
While legislative change is highly country-specific and must be developed in partnership with the population, a few promising practices have been developed in some Canadian provinces as well as in Australia.
Global Adoption and Examples
Canada:
Some Canadian provinces, like British Columbia, have formally supported decision-making legislation. This allows individuals to designate supporters to help them understand information relevant to making decisions, communicate their decisions, and understand the consequences. See more
Australia:
Various states in Australia have adopted SDM. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has been instrumental in this process, advocating for reforms that are consistent with the National Decision-Making Principles. The ALRC also emphasizes the importance of reforming existing tests of a person's capacity to exercise legal rights or participate in legal processes, advocating for consistency with the National Decision-Making Principles. To learn more
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The right to access to justice for persons with disabilities is enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD recognizes that women and girls with disabilities face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, and that additional measures should be taken to ensure their rights.
Article 6: Women with disabilities
- States Parties recognize that women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination, and in this regard shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
- States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development, advancement and empowerment of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the present Convention.
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Article 12: Equal recognition before the law
- States Parties reaffirm that persons with disabilities have the right to recognition everywhere as persons before the law.
- States Parties shall recognize that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.
- States Parties shall take appropriate measures to provide access by persons with disabilities to the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity.
- States Parties shall ensure that all measures that relate to the exercise of legal capacity provide for appropriate and effective safeguards to prevent abuse in accordance with international human rights law. Such safeguards shall ensure that measures relating to the exercise of legal capacity respect the rights, will and preferences of the person, are free of conflict of interest and undue influence, are proportional and tailored to the person's circumstances, apply for the shortest time possible and are subject to regular review by a competent, independent and impartial authority or judicial body. The safeguards shall be proportional to the degree to which such measures affect the person's rights and interests.
- Subject to the provisions of this article, States Parties shall take all appropriate and effective measures to ensure the equal right of persons with disabilities to own or inherit property, to control their own financial affairs and to have equal access to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of financial credit, and shall ensure that persons with disabilities are not arbitrarily deprived of their property.
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Article 13: Access to justice
- States Parties shall ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others, including through the provision of procedural and age-appropriate accommodations, in order to facilitate their effective role as direct and indirect participants, including as witnesses, in all legal proceedings, including at investigative and other preliminary stages.
- In order to help to ensure effective access to justice for persons with disabilities, States Parties shall promote appropriate training for those working in the field of administration of justice, including police and prison staff.
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For more information about UN Women’s work, please contact:
Laura-Lee SAGE
Policy Specialist (Access to Justice for women with disabilities)
e: [ Click to reveal ]
Doreen BUETTNER
Programme Management Specialist
e: [ Click to reveal ]