Destroying Disability: Expanding Application of the Genocide Convention

Disability is not a protected class under the Genocide Convention, even though disabled people across the world frequently face egregious human rights violations. Many of those practices should be considered genocide because they meet the criteria listed in the definition. In order to amount to genocide, an action must be committed with the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, by killing, causing serious harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction of the group, prevent births, or forcibly transfer children out of the group. Disabled people have been subjected to all these actions. By refusing to grant this group status as a protected class, the international community has allowed acts of genocide to continue into the twenty first century. To prevent future genocides against this group, and advance disability rights on a global scale, disabled people need the protections provided in the Genocide Convention.