Mother’s complaint to UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities held inadmissible

29/09/22

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has declared inadmissible a Communication brought by JS in relation to the death of her son, SS. Both JS and SS were Polish nationals. SS had lived in the United Kingdom for some years.

JS claimed that the United Kingdom had violated SS’s right to equal treatment under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, when the UK Courts determined that SS’s life support could be withdrawn. SS had been in a coma, and in a state of minimal consciousness, for some time. SS’s wife supported discontinuing life support; his mother and sisters opposed that decision.

JS applied to the European Court of Human Rights and also, at the same time, to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“the Committee”) (in January 2021). The Committee declined to grant JS’s request for interim measures. In September 2022 it made public its decision that the Complaint was inadmissible because it had already been considered by another procedure of international investigation. The European Court of Human Rights had already addressed and rejected JS’s arguments.

As a result, the Committee did not consider the other arguments advanced by the UK Government, that the Complaint was an abuse of process and manifestly ill founded.