Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS, cilt.21, sa.7, ss.933-955, 2017 (ESCI)
This study takes off from the critical ideas on the foundations of human rights, from the particular point of the subject of rights, and suggests that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has the potential to liberate the position of the human subject in human rights law, and therefore can act as a guidance in thinking about the current and future prospects of human rights and its underlying concepts. It is argued that by looking at the spirit and purpose of the CRPD, some embedded traditional concepts, namely human dignity and autonomy, can find a better meaning and purpose, by adopting a critical screening and by introducing a relatively new concept, namely vulnerability. The study will briefly refer to general criticism surrounding the idea of human rights, in particular relation to the issue of the 'subject of rights', in order to picture the theoretical environment where human rights of persons with disabilities are expected to appear. Departing from the point where criticisms leave us, CRPD's approach to the human subject will enter the picture within the concepts of dignity, autonomy and vulnerability. Finally, the study will demonstrate the presence and interpretation of these concepts in the convention by targeting a specific article of the convention and present a final assessment between CRPD and contemporary human rights theory.