Competing Rights in Context: The Rights of Persons with Disabilities

• Author: Lauren Bates
• Pages: 421-440

421

Chapter 14

Competing Rights in Context:

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Lauren Bates

A. Introduction

It is an established principle of international human rights law

that rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent.1 There

is no hierarchy of rights: all rights have equal status and cannot



  

example, civil and political rights cannot be fully achieved with-

out social and economic rights — poverty and lack of education

will inhibit the ability of individuals to exercise their democratic

rights. On the other hand, without civil and political rights, such

as voting rights, individuals are unlikely to be able to press for the



1 See, for example, Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, UN-

GAOR, 1993, UN Doc A/CONF.157/23, online: UNHCR www.unhcr.org/

refworld/docid/3ae6b39ec.html, which states that

All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and

interrelated. The international community must treat human rights

globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with



particularities and various historical, cultural and religious back-

grounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless

of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and

protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Lauren Bates

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This does not mean, however, that there may not be tensions

 

rights claims are, or are perceived to be, in tension with each

other. Tensions are most acute when it may appear that one



In this sense, rights claims may be seen to compete with each

other. This raises extremely complex issues.

Although it is not unusual for competing rights claims to mani-

    -



religious, gender, or sexual orientation rights. This paper will ex-





context of particular types of rights, such as disability rights, for

      

to ground any approach to developing a framework to address

competing rights claims. The second is that the challenges of

competing rights may manifest differently in particular contexts,

and that these varying manifestations may be an element in

designing such a framework.

The approach of this paper is descriptive rather than prescrip-

tive. It is not intended to evaluate any particular approach to ad-

dressing competing rights claims but to highlight some aspects

of disability rights that may differentiate competing rights claims

in this area from those in other areas, to identify the types of

competing rights claims that may manifest in the context of dis-

         

been made to such competing claims in this context.