Overview
The human rights model of disability is grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006). It frames disability as a human rights issue: disabled people have the right to full participation in society, to reasonable accommodation, and to be free from discrimination. Unlike the social model, which focuses on removing barriers, the human rights model asserts positive obligations on states and institutions to ensure inclusion and participation.
Relationship to the social model
Lawson and Beckett (2021) argue against the common view that the human rights model simply improves upon the social model. Their “complementarity thesis” holds that the two models have different subjects and different functions. The social model identifies the structures that disable; the human rights model establishes the legal obligations to change them. Drawing on Foucault’s technologies of power, they show that each model operates at a different level of analysis: one reveals the mechanism of oppression, the other provides the legal and institutional tools to contest it. In this reading, they are complementary rather than competing.
Relationship to autism and neurodivergence
The CRPD is particularly relevant to autistic people with intellectual disability, for whom questions of legal capacity, consent, and self-determination are acute. Article 12, which affirms that disabled people have legal capacity on an equal basis with others, has implications for guardianship practices, supported decision-making, and the rights of autistic people to make choices about their own lives. The human rights model also supports the right to communication, including non-verbal communication, and the right to accessible environments.
Key sources
- United Nations (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Lawson, A. & Beckett, A.E. (2021). The social and human rights models of disability: towards a complementarity thesis. The International Journal of Human Rights, 25(2), 348–379.