Achieving equal citizenship: meeting the challenges of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The recent UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities provides a powerful vision of the opportunities and support which should be available to intellectually disabled people and their families, based on a principled commitment to equal citizenship. When ratified nationally, this wide‐ranging Convention has the force of law. Nevertheless there is a long road to travel in securing its successful implementation. Looking across different aspects of the Convention (concerned for example with education, community living or employment) we can identify three common ‘building blocks’ for progress, focused respectively on strengthening self‐determination, promoting mainstream inclusion and providing personalised support. Experience in many countries of the ‘North’ suggests 12 key elements in national and local strategies to address these three requirements. It also points to the need for active partnership between civil society organisations, government and the current service system in which managers and other professional staff can play an important catalytic role. One priority is to invest in developing the capacity for the whole‐system leadership required to bring together the other 12 elements of strategy so as to create a virtuous spiral of positive change. We need to find effective ways of sharing experience across countries on how all this can best be done.