Participation Without Authority?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD) transformed the disability rights movement’s demand of ‘Nothing about us, without us’  into a legal obligation. Article 4(3) of the CRPD requires the States to ‘closely consult with and actively involve’ persons with disabilities in law- and policy-making (not limited to disability-specific issues) through organisations for persons with disabilities (DPOs) (General Comment No. 7 of the CRPD Committee). Read alongside Articles 29 and 33(3), the CRPD gives effect to ‘inclusive equality’, relocating persons with disabilities from the periphery to the center of governance. Two decades later, discussions have moved from participation to representation in political and public life (roundtable of the 19th Conference of States Parties to the CRPD, 2026 – COSP19). Its background note calls for persons with disabilities to participate as ‘active, engaged and influential actors’ and, in its recommendations, as ‘leaders, decision-makers and advocates’ to realise the rights enshrined in the CRPD for, with and by persons with disabilities.

This piece argues that though the CRPD confers persons with disabilities a right to participate and subsequent interpretation has read it as a requirement of meaningful involvement, the legal consequences of such participation in institutional decision-making are unspecified. There are certain structural limits for participation, be it decisional or institutional. It is premised that participation and authority perform different legal functions. The former guarantees presence within institutional, law-making and decision-making processes, while the latter determines the power and capacity to shape, constrain and determine institutional outcomes. So, one may be consulted without being acted upon, included without being decisive, and heard without acquiring authority.

Participation – Agents or Arbiters?  

Historically, persons with disabilities have been spoken for and often spoken over. Being reduced to objects of knowledge production (Ahmed, 2000), they faced both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice (Fricker, 2007; Dotson, 2011). What has the demand for equal participation of persons with disabilities achieved, so far? The CRPD’s participatory drafting process sought to address the tensions between the epistemology of disability and epistemology from disability. It evidences an ‘epistemological break’ from earlier human rights regimes. The Ad-hoc Committee had sustained engagement with civil society, including persons with disabilities, DPOs and human rights institutions (Dhanda, 2008; Quinn, 2009).

Though it democratised access to treaty-making, the extent to which persons with disabilities had authority over outcomes remains a question. Proposals from DPOs remained subject to inter-State negotiation and consensus (Schulze, 2010). For instance, disability experience was invoked during negotiations of Draft Article 18 as a basis for stronger participatory claims, ie, to give ‘primacy of voice’ to persons with disabilities in matters concerning them. Though some viewed experiential knowledge as carrying normative implications beyond consultation, this proposal was not agreed.

Article 4(3) CRPD makes participation legally indispensable, but the phrase ‘active involvement’ is not qualified in terms of binding influence, decision-making power or co-legislative status. General Comment No.7 elaborates that participation must be timely, accessible and meaningful. But meaningful to whom? States? Courts? Persons with disabilities? It also does not articulate consent-based participation or confer determinative or decision-making authority. However, it states that State parties must recognise effective remedies for non-compliance with the participatory obligation (General Comment No. 7 para 66).

Some scholarship reads Article 4(3) as requiring ‘effective participation’ which furthers the obligation beyond mere consultation. In this direction, the COSP19’s roundtable seeks influence and representation of persons with disabilities for meaningful participation. Though this is an attempt to ensure the presence and amplification of disability perspectives, how can decision-making authority over outcomes be transferred to persons with disabilities? Participatory authority concerns the legal consequences attached to participation rather than participation itself. Disability perspectives must not merely inform institutional reasoning but also generate obligations of justification, response or constraint.

Interestingly, in certain other contexts, such as the ILO Convention No. 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, more than consultation is required; the principle of free, prior and informed consent and self-determination operates. In the absence of such requirements, States engage in tokenistic consultation, late-stage engagement and selective inclusion (General Comment No.7 paras 22-24). Lapses in the implementation of participatory obligation and failure in operationalising accountability structures (Article 33(3)) undermine disability inclusion further. Recent intervention before the CRPD Committee reveals the continued presence of legal, institutional and political barriers that limit the effective realisation of participatory rights under Article 29.

Representation is Not Necessarily Authority

Unlike Article 4(3), which emphasises the participation of persons with disabilities through their representative organisations, the Working Group draft had mentioned the participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organisations (Bruce A., 2014). There is no singular disabled standpoint; the category is internally stratified (across physical, sensory, intellectual,  psycho-social disabilities, etc.,) and structured within hierarchies of visibility, recognition and legitimacy in addition to its intersectionality (with gender, class, age, race and caste). For instance, the COSP19 recognises that persons from indigenous and ethnic minority backgrounds, women and girls and persons facing intersecting discrimination remain marginalised.

Moreover, participatory structures tend to privilege legible, organized forms of disability while marginalising non-apparent, less visible and less institutionalized experiences. They recreate the familiar problem of marginalization of the ‘other of the other’. Hence, representation through DPOs necessarily involves aggregation, filtering and mediation and does not rule out concerns of internal representation to ensure meaningful participation. This is why the General Comment No. 7 makes it clear that no DPO can claim to represent all persons with disabilities. Research also points out that when participation of persons with disabilities happens through DPOs in decision-making, it is not yet ‘meaningful’ as per the standards in the CRPD. But what is the institutional weight of participation of persons with disabilities?

Institutional Inclusion and Authority

Unlike most other human rights treaties, Article 34(4) of the CRPD expressly requires ‘balanced gender representation’ while calling for the ‘participation of experts with disabilities’ in the CRPD Committee, with due consideration for Article 4(3). Though this can be read as a significant step towards securing the presence of experts with disabilities, there is no specification of the representational framework through which such expertise gains institutional weight. A careful re-reading of Article 34(4) therefore raises some concerns.

First, the provision uses different formulations for gender and disability, suggesting different models of inclusion. It addresses gender (despite its status as a contested identity in theory) as a problem of balanced representation. Disability, on the other hand, is approached in terms of access and participation, that is, being present at the table. In other words, neither the CRPD nor the CRPD Committee’s Rules of Procedure reserve a quota, a fixed minimum threshold, or a particular proportion of experts with disabilities in the Committee’s composition, though the CRPD drafting history records some proposals to secure majority representation of experts with disabilities. Second, the current composition of the Committee is notable: of its 18 members, 9 are women and 16 are persons with disabilities. Whether the CRPD Committee can stabilize a composition analogous to that of the CEDAW Committee (which, in practice, has a majority representation of women, even in the absence of an explicit mandate/quota under the CEDAW) will depend on time and institutional practice. Further, the absence of a framework for representation of disability diversity leaves persons with deaf-blindness, intellectual disabilities and psycho-social disabilities still awaiting representation.

Third, the provision does not treat disability experience as a substitute for professional expertise.  The CRPD’s broader commitment to disability participation, however, attempts not to treat professional expertise and disability experience as mutually exclusive categories (Bruce A., 2014). While Article 4(3) recognises lived experience as epistemically valuable, Article 34 speaks of experts with disabilities, emphasizing the value of disability experience when embodied within professional expertise.

Thus, the CRPD aspires to expand disability participation more than it restructures institutional authority itself. General Comment No. 7 (paras 23, 48 and 49) is remarkably detailed in its interpretation of the participation of persons with disabilities in decision-making by States, but it does not convert participation into decision-making authority; rather, it treats participation as a potential constraint on unreasoned decision-making. Similarly, Article 34 appears less concerned with reallocating authority than with ensuring the presence of disability expertise within the existing structure of authority. While COSP19’s roundtable points out the need for representation of persons with disabilities in decision-making bodies, frictions around participation, representation and authority remain to be addressed. It is now for the next phase of disability law scholarship to not only contemplate what authority participation and representation ought to entail but also to interrogate what identifiable duties of institutional response they create. Only then, ‘Nothing about us, without us’ can be actualised.

An earlier version of this blog post was presented at the 18th Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory (DFLT-18) organised by Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne. The author thanks the organisers and participants for their feedback. The author also acknowledges refinement of insights through the 17th International Disability Summer School at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, University of Galway.