Critical Reflections on Recognising and Enforcing Disability Rights within the Sri Lankan Legal Framework

Abstract

The use of law as a response to disability is arguably a recent development in Sri Lanka and is reflected primarily in The Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (hereinafter ‘the Act’).1 Even at a policy level the link made between the responsibility of the State towards disabled people and towards the protection of their rights remains weak. Most measures taken for the improvement of the conditions of disabled people remains both basic in quality and simplistic in its rationale. For instance, in the case of Ajith CS Perera v Attorney General (SC/FR) 221/2009 the Supreme Court ordered that the accessibility regulations issued under the Act in 2005 should be implemented. To-date however the implementation of those regulations is far from satisfactory. That example suggests that in the absence of a grounded understanding of the context (including models for understanding disability), law reform will not be effective in improving the enjoyment of disability rights in the country. Therefore, in re-imagining disability law in Sri Lanka, it is necessary to draw on the existing understandings of the impact of disability on the quality of life of people with disability and the community in general and to also challenge some of those existing understandings. This paper seeks to advance four arguments in that regard.