Message of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities

In 1992, the UN declared 3 December the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. There are nearly 650 million people around the world who live with disabilities, while in Hungary almost 600 thousand people live with a lasting health damage or disabilities. For persons with disabilities around the world, it was a huge leap forward when on 13 December 2006, the UN approved the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – an agreement hammered out as a result of nearly ten years of work –, which Hungary was among the first to join, thus the Convention came into force in our country already in 2008. 

It should always be stressed that CRPD is not “only” an important international convention but also a milestone, a changed attitude based on human rights, an important event in the history of international and Hungarian disability management, i.e. the achievements of the past one and a half decades, the enforcement of the principle of equal treatment and the promotion of independent living, and reasonable accommodation can all be listed here. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

The promotion of disability-related matters has always been among the obligatory tasks of the Hungarian ombudsman institution, even when this was not specifically required by the law. The rights protection activity of the ombudsman includes conducting ad hoc and comprehensive, thematic ex officio inquiries, regular visits to institutions providing care for the disabled, the monitoring of signals given by civil society and professional organisations that protect the rights and interests of persons with disabilities, as well as initiating legislative and law enforcement steps required for the deepening of rights protection. With effect from 1 January 2023, the General Directorate for Disability is set up in the framework of the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary, which means that in Hungary, the independent mechanism operating in compliance with the UN Convention, which directly supports, protects and controls the enforcement of the fundamental rights of persons with disabilities on the basis of the Convention can be established.

However, the Ombudsman is not merely responsible for specifically disability-related complaints and inquiries. In 2022, the Commissioner also encountered those questions and problems which affected this vulnerable group of society, i.e. persons with disabilities and their families in other areas, especially when monitoring education and health care. He primarily dealt with the question of whether they actually get access or reach those services in their everyday lives which they are eligible to “on paper”, i.e. according to the law, and he examined what legal and non-legal obstacles may affect such access. Similarly to the previous years, in 2022, the Ombudsman conducted comprehensive inquiries at several institutions for persons with disabilities as well, and based on these investigations, he formulated specific and system-level recommendations alike.