What progress has been made to operationalise the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) framework to promote inclusive employment?

Challenge #1: While domestic laws related to inclusive employment in many settings are underpinned by the UNCRPD framework, they do not fully reflect the key principles.

• The UNCRPD replaces a charity approach with a human rights approach to disability, which is described in terms of environmental barriers, including negative attitudes and discrimination which exclude persons with disabilities. However, in many cases, domestic laws do not fully incorporate the key principles of UNCRPD. The heterogeneous nature of disability and its implications to individuals and society is often overlooked leading to discordance between domestic laws and the UNCRPD framework. One review noted that laws in East Africa often do not explicitly recognise certain types of disability such as mental illness, making people who experience mental illness vulnerable to discrimination due to inadequate legal protection. Societal attitudes such as stigma can make it hard for people with mental illness to get a job, retain their job or return to a job after an episode of medical leave. Furthermore, over-medicalisation remains prevalent, for example forced treatment for people with mental illness or the need for disability registration where impairment criteria is assessed by medical professional.
• Restrictive clauses in legislation narrow the scope of opportunities related to inclusive employment, for example thresholds and criteria to trigger tax exemptions for employing persons with disabilities. These clauses are often placed either at an individual or organisational level. For example, at the individual level - adopting a relatively narrow definition of disability such as requirement of substantial limitation in functioning; requirement of medical certification from a specific professional or disability centre as a proof of impairment. At organisational level, restrictive clauses might include size of enterprise, or only public or private sector enterprises are included.
• Gender bias either explicitly or implicitly disadvantages women with disabilities with and without caring responsibilities. In Thailand, the membership quota for women with disabilities in the National Committee for Empowerment of persons with disabilities, is often overlooked.

Challenge #2: Relevant employment policies are poorly conceived, with a lack of participation and coordination

• Policy formulation processes have been ambiguous, unsystematic, and not evidence-informed. Contextual political and economic factors dominate, with sub-optimal policies drawn for political gains, particularly during elections. For example, in Uganda, the persons with disability act 2006 was passed speedily, closer to an upcoming election, bypassing the required deliberate process and overlooking the shortcomings present in the act.
• Participation of persons with disabilities and Organisations of People with Disabilities (OPDs) is vital to the Human Rights-Based Approach and CRPD but is overlooked in many instances. However, participation alone cannot resolve policy issues. Even with participation of persons with disabilities and Organisations for Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) one review reported that the country’s policies fell short of the standards to completely embrace the key CRPD principles. Insufficient financial resources, multiple competing priorities, bureaucracy, and Government ministries’ short-sighted vision to prioritise policies and projects that reap immediate benefits have been viewed as additional hurdles impacting the policy formulation and implementation processes. 
• Effective coordination among different actors including government departments, persons with disabilities, and OPDs can drive the various stakeholders to engage in awareness and advocacy activities, which in turn can facilitate optimal buy-in from both employees with disabilities and employers of persons with disabilities. Nevertheless, it was reported that even individual government departments do not coordinate well to streamline the processes, leading to piecemeal policies. 

Challenge #3: Implementation of policy and legal frameworks suffers from inadequate guidelines, and lack of effective coordination.

• Absence of robust guidelines to mandate implementation have resulted in employers’ lack of enthusiasm for adopting or enforcing affirmative actions. Moreover, in some countries, different jurisdictions have adopted policies as they fit, or based on their interpretation. This has resulted in discrepancy in the translation of policies into practice across regions. This variation causes confusion among both employers and employees about the elements of the policies and results in a ‘location lottery’ contributing to further widening inequities between persons with and without a disability.
• Multiple governmental ministries are tasked with implementation responsibilities resulting to confusion and duplication of tasks especially when there is lack of a central mechanism for policy coordination. In Namibia, there is variation in terms of the disability model adopted by individual ministries which again can have an impact on the effective implementation of policies and programmes.

Challenge #4: Lack of monitoring and evaluation strategies limit assessing the success of inclusive policies.

• Article 33 and Article 34 of the UNCRPD provide mechanisms for national and international monitoring, respectively. However, there is a lack of concrete measures and outcome indicators to efficiently measure the usability of the policies. Limited understanding of the concept of human rights and participatory approaches on the part of policy makers have been cited as the reasons.
• Government reports tend to focus more on the output and the process of policies delivered by Government agencies rather than the goals and objectives of the policies. Although one study reported monitoring indicators related to employment statistics there was discrepancy between those reported by Government agencies and independent commission such as the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand.