Russian Disability Support Programs (1993-2015) and UN Documents on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: The Problem of Compliance on Labor Integration into Society

This article is devoted to the problem of compliance of the Russian federal programs on social support for people with disabilities with the main international documents on the rights of people with disabilities in relation to the integration of people with disabilities into mainstream society and promotion of the realization of the right to work. The aim of this article is to formulate and resolve the question of the degree of compliance of Russian programs with the provisions of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other similar documents of the UN with regard to the rights of people with disabilities to work. These programs contain specific principles, objectives and methods of implementation of the state social policy. The main sources on the rights of people with disabilities were adopted and consistently implemented between 1993 and 2010 in three Russian federal programs under the general title "Social Support for People with Disabilities", as well as published sources with the same overall aims from later programs. The second group of sources consists of documents of the UN on the rights of persons with disabilities in the first place, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) and previous similar acts. Based on the comparative analysis of these two groups of sources, the authors came to the following conclusions. Contrary to an opinion of a considerable backwardness of Russia in relation to the implementation of employment rights of persons with disabilities in relation to Western countries, the authors found that Russian programs were generally consistent with international conventions. The existing (largely formal) differences between Russian social programs and international documents were not of a fundamental, but rather of a terminological nature. Russia's refusal to ratify the optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities only testifies to the desire to evade consideration of particular cases of violation of national legislation on the rights of persons with disabilities and is not associated with the fear of revealing the contradictions of the Russian programs concerning the principles of the Convention. With regard to the refusal to sign this Protocol, Russia, against the background of Western countries, was not alone. Violations of the rights of persons with disabilities taking place in Russia, including the right to work, are not related to disregard for international principles and discrimination against persons with disabilities as a socio-demographic group, but to non-compliance with the national legislation and the general weakness and ineffectiveness of the social policy. The authors conclude that Russia, in the period under study, was not an outsider in the implementation within social programs of the principles of integrating people with disabilities into society by involving them in productive work as set out in UN documents. Unsubstantiated statements, so often made in publications about disability in Russia, are not the case.

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