Handbooks for Parliamentarians on Human Rights Treaties

Image of a Greecian building with the date 1889, surrounded with a wreath of leaves. At bottom, it says "Inter-Parliamentary Union: For democracy. For everyone."

Often, protecting the human rights of people with disabilities may require using multiple human rights treaties and addressing many different areas within human rights. For example, protecting the human rights of refugees with disabilities may require using both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and also treaties meant to protect refugees in general. Or protecting the human rights of people with disabilities who have been sold into slavery may require using treaties designed to stop human trafficking, and so forth.

Parliamentarians can find more than 30 handbooks on this web page that address many different human rights issues, some of which may be useful in considering how to protect the human rights of the most vulnerable populations among people with disabilities. These include handbooks on the CRPD, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, treaties addressing child trafficking and other human trafficking, child protection issues, eliminating child labor, refugee protection, and others. Some of these 30-plus handbooks focus on other issues such as how parliamentarians can use their role to fight HIV/AIDS or improve health among mothers, newborns, and babies. Some are on more general topics for parliamentarians, such as A Guide to Parliamentary Practice.

All the handbooks are available in English in PDF format. Many of the books are also translated into at least one other language. The most common translated language in the list is French, but there are also some books translated into Spanish, and a few in Arabic, Russian, and Chinese.

Many of these publications are published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), and many are jointly published with various United Nations agencies.

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