Political Representation and the Human Rights Model of Disability: A Bulgarian Case

Bulgaria ratified the UNCRPD in 2012 but what can be observed locally is a chronic failure to embrace and implement its fundamental principles. This article explores the current state and the future of the human rights model of disability in Bulgaria. It focuses on a fundamental pillar of the human rights model, namely the participation of disabled people in all decision making that affects them. We expose how the local definition of political “representation” diverges from what the human rights model envisages, and we argue that the organisations that are expected to “represent” disabled people remain stuck into needs-based attitudes and models. This makes them agents not of change but of further affirmation and cementing of practices and solutions that turn disabled people into “objects” of care, lock them into paternalist forms of dependency, and strongly depoliticise disability issues in the country.