Chinese and Foreign Experts Discuss "Legal Development and the Rights of Disabilities" Online

On June 29, an international video seminar on "Legal Development and the Rights of Disabilities" was held in our university. The meeting was held both online and offline. This event is one of the cloud side meetings of the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Zhang Wanhong from the Institute of Human Rights of Wuhan University presided over the meeting and introduced that the rights of disability is one of the rights issues of equal protection of specific groups that the Institute of Human Rights of Wuhan University has been paying attention to for a long time.

According to Feng Guo of the Law School of Wuhan University, the teachers and students at the School of Law of our university established a private legal aid institution earlier, and they have been providing high-quality public welfare legal services to the disadvantaged people such as the poor, the weak and the disabled. Later, the Public Interest and Development Law Institute, and the Institute of Human Rights was established, pushing human rights research and education to a new level.

Rooney Harvardson, a professor at Oslo City University in Norway, introduced the development of EU legislation related to accessibility. Cai Wei of the Gender Equality and Social Integration Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific reviewed the practices of many countries in the Asia-Pacific region in improving their domestic legal systems and realizing equal rights for the disabled. Chen Bo from the Faculty of Law of Macau University of Science and Technology showed how China’s judicial system has gradually improved to promote equal protection of the disabled through specific judgment documents and typical case analysis, and explained that China’s judicial protection system for the disabled takes into account both formal equality and substance equality. Hu Zhongming from the Research Office of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation introduced the achievements of the law on the protection of the disabled in the past 30 years, including the legalization of the protection of the rights and interests of the disabled, the national development plan for the cause of the disabled, and the standardization of services for the disabled.

Many participants pointed out that the progress of China's disability legal system is reflected in many fields, from legislation to justice, from barrier-free accessibility to education and employment. It is the joint efforts of the government and non-governmental parties that have effectively promoted the improvement and development of the disability legal system.