Comments on non-legislative material relating to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Public Defender of Rights refused the possibility that the scope of his authority should be extended to include the monitoring of rights of persons with disabilities. Within his comments he pointed out to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs that the Public Defender of Rights was not a "collecting" institution for the various agendas to which the Czech Republic has committed itself.

The first Czech Ombudsman Otakar Motejl had repeatedly objected to such practice and criticised the attempt to incorporate the human rights agenda, including the field of discrimination, into the institution of the Public Defender of Rights, which is designed in a completely different way. Activities of the equality body are attached to the national ombudsman only in six EU Members States (including the Czech Republic) and the same applies to other agendas concerning human rights. If some colleagues from abroad perform the office of an independent monitoring mechanism according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, they form only a minority group of countries (Latvia, Lithuania and Hungary). In Europe, by contrast, it is quite common that in parallel with the ombudsman there is an independent institution for the protection of human rights. Such institution can then deal with human rights in a complex way, including the monitoring of rights of persons with disabilities according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Public Defender of Rights, in connection with the currently discussed monitoring mechanisms relating to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, also noted that it was first necessary to clearly define the position and the mandate of such authority. At present, however, it is not clear how many persons with disabilities would be concerned, and such persons are not defined or specified. 

In this respect, the Defender expressed his support for the creation of an independent institution for the protection of human rights (fulfilling the characteristics of the so-called Paris Principles), which would serve the purpose of dealing with the agenda (cf., for example, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, etc.). This would mean solution with respect to the future on quite a realistic assumption of new and additional tasks in the field of human rights, which the Czech Republic will have to perform. The phenomenon of establishing new agendas is progressive and the Czech Republic cannot deal with the new requirements by constantly adding, often in an unmethodical way, the given authority to that of existing institutions. Such procedure is most inappropriate and, moreover, it often has very negative consequences.