COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor: State Measures’ Impact on Persons with Disabilities During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Allegations are emerging that certain groups of people, including persons with disabilities, are being disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and that governments have failed to adopt a disability-inclusive response, resulting in serious human rights violations worldwide. In order to collect evidence on the (lack of) state measures concerning the impact of COVID-19 on persons with disabilities, a coalition of seven disability rights organizations launched a major global initiative, the COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor (“COVID-19 DRM”), soon after the pandemic was declared. Under the framework of COVID-19 DRM, a three-component survey, containing three questionnaires, was created to collect information (i) from governments, (ii) from national human rights monitoring mechanisms, and (iii) from persons with disabilities and their families and representative organizations. The questionnaires were made available in 25 languages on a website established especially for the COVID-19 DRM, and this remained open from 20 April to 7 August 2020, during which period 2,152 online responses were collected from 134 countries around the world. In this chapter, we give an overview of how and why the COVID-19 DRM was created and present the methodology we applied. We show the findings of the survey and share representative testimonies from persons with disabilities and other respondents. We give an overview of the impact of the survey and then we conclude with proposals for consideration of different stakeholders.