Reservations to the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities

Abstract

In expressing their consent to be bound by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, some States have made reservations and interpretative declarations that affect virtually all of their provisions. Some of these reservations raise problems regarding their compatibility with the object and purpose of the treaty: those directed to provisions that play a key role in the structure of the treaty, that do not allow derogation under any circumstances, those that express customary law or even jus cogens, or those written in a general way. In some cases, the other States parties have expressed their rejection, opting for the separability of the invalid reservation of the instrument of manifestation of consent, that is, by the application of the treaty in its entirety without the author State being able to benefit from its reservation. But this response has not been uniform. The treaty monitoring body, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has also constantly warned about the obligations that allow the integrity of the treaty to be preserved. The study of these issues allows us to reflect on the scope of States' compliance with the new model of disability based on human rights adopted by the Convention.