The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is an international human rights agreement that New Zealand ratified in 2008. It describes governments’ responsibilities to uphold the rights of disabled people.
At a population level, rainbow people are more likely to be disabled than our peers. Disabled rainbow people in New Zealand can face specific barriers to their human rights related to discrimination, bias, safety, accessibility barriers and medical judgement. Some of these barriers exist within rainbow community spaces, and within disability communities and support services.
New Zealand regularly reports to the UN about how our progress with ensuring disabled people’s human rights, and the Committee on the Rights of the Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) makes recommendations for how we could improve.
In their concluding observations on the combined second and third periodic reports of New Zealand, the CRPD made six specific recommendations relating to disabled rainbow people. In summary these were:
support the development of organisations of LGBTI+ people with disabilities.
develop a national disability data framework including collection and public reporting of data on LGBTI+ people with disabilities.
provide laws and other measures to explicitly protection from multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on the intersection between disability and LGBTI+ status.
explicitly prohibit unnecessary, invasive and irreversible medical interventions on intersex children before they can provide informed consent.
develop and implement a child rights-based health-care protocol for intersex children, guaranteeing the rights of children to bodily integrity, autonomy and self-determination.
report and collect data on non-urgent medical interventions performed on intersex children.
More about New Zealand’s response to the UNCRPD
Government information about the Convention and its implementation from the Office for Disability Issues
A map of responsible government agencies for the CRPD’s recommendations.
The Independent Monitoring Mechanism is a partnership to monitor disabled people’s rights between the Ombudsman, Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission and the Disabled People's Organisations' Coalition
The Donald Beasley Institute’s monitoring report My Experiences, My Rights 2022 (and the Easy Read version) talk about intersex medical experiences and bodily automony