On April 30, 2019, the European Network on Independent Living and Disability Rights International held a webinar on ‘Family and Community Integration of Children under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD): Implications for Group Homes and Residential Care of New Human Rights Standards and Findings from Research’.

Dear DRI supporter, 

It is hard to believe, but it has been 25 years since Disability Rights International (DRI) was founded! 

In the beginning, we were trying to convince the world that disability rights were human rights, that all people – regardless of a disability – are protected by the same human rights. And due in part to our work over many years – via investigations, exposés, reports, trainings, media coverage and advocacy – the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) was born. 

Dragana Ciric Milovanovic, Director of DRI's European Regional Office, speaks at the United Nations in New York in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 

There are millions of infants, children and adolescents locked away and forgotten about in institutions all over the world. But the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – ratified by 174 countries – and the recent comments of the UN Disability Committee, have made it clear this can’t continue.

September 27, 2017 - Washington, DC - The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has explicitly stated that every child has a right to grow up in a family, not in an institution or group home, in response to comments submitted to the Committee by Disability Rights International.