Monitoring of rights of people with disabilities
Since 2018, we have been monitoring the protection of rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Czech Republic. We have provided information on our findings to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and also to national authorities.
To this end, we have conducted inquiries and surveys and drawn up recommendations to improve the situation of people with disabilities. In doing so, we co-operate directly with people with disabilities and non-profit organisations. We also deal with the procedure of municipalities acting in the capacity of public guardians.
Our activities are based on practical findings. The Ombudsman has an advisory body composed of people with disabilities and disability advocates. The role of the advisory body is to look out for systemic problems, assist in setting priorities and making recommendations, and identify issues that need to be addressed in the area of the rights of people with disabilities. The advisory body also ensures that people with disabilities are kept informed of the Ombudsman’s activities.
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities regularly evaluates the situation in individual countries and, if appropriate, suggests recommendations to them to improve the situation. The Ombudsman provides the Committee with underlying documents and informs the Committee of his findings, which the Committee will then take into account in communication with the Government of the Czech Republic and in formulating recommendations. We provide a monitoring report to the Committee on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which not only maps the current state of affairs from the Ombudsman’s perspective, but also responds to the report of the Czech Republic. In addition, we draw up a list of questions. The Committee may use these questions in compiling its own List of Issues, which should be answered by the Czech Republic.
Our goal is to improve the accessibility of information for everyone without distinction. Therefore, we were the first and only institution in the Czech Republic to translate the entire UN Convention into the sign language (link to the website with videos) and we try to make information accessible in an easy-to-read form.
Have a look at the outputs from our our activites or look up interesting cases we dealt with in the Defender’s Opinions Register.