Monitoring the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: data and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

This paper approaches the general issue of the complex challenges in the relationship between those who generate data -- researchers, scientists, and state statistical offices -- and those who use data -- researchers and policy-makers -- in light of the more specific policy challenges created by the monitoring requirement of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD: Article 33). International Conventions and Treaties standardly suffer from being persistently ineffectual primarily because of the absence of implementation mechanisms. The CRPD, by contrast, explicitly requires State Parties who have ratified it to institute data generation and monitoring mechanisms for its implementation. This paper argues that WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) can be brought into the service of the CRPD data generation and monitoring mandate, both in the shaping of relevant data streams and in the creation of relevant indicators, and concludes by reviewing the challenges that remain.