Strengthening Rehabilitation for People with Disabilities: A Human Rights Approach as the Essential Next Step to Accelerating Global Progress
The right to access and benefit from health related rehabilitation is firmly grounded in several international human rights documents including among others in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which requires States to "…organize, strengthen and extend comprehensive habilitation and rehabilitation services and programmes, particularly in the areas of health…". This pronouncement presents new challenges at the level of policy design and service development but also for evaluation. Documented disparities in access to rehabilitation and the increasing demand for public accountability exert pressure upon health systems to assess progress in fulfilling their commitments under international human rights law. Human rights however is a vague concept, capable of multiple interpretations and its evaluation is therefore problematic not only for those involved in monitoring and evaluation but also for health professionals who may have a limited understanding of how human rights can be applied in patients care. This presentation discusses the tripartite duty of States to organize, strengthen and extend comprehensive rehabilitation services and programmes and proposes an evaluation framework. It is informed by and extends a previous analysis of the legal provisions contained in the Disability Convention with respect to rehabilitation and espouses a contemporary person-centered approach to rehabilitation care. The rights based framework is intended to inform future research on the development of relevant metrics and indicators to improve human rights monitoring and reporting.