Second review of New Zealand's implementation

The List of Issues for New Zealand was released by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2018. This started New Zealand's second review against the Disability Convention.

What does the List of Issues say?

Every government that has ratified the Convention has to provide regular progress reporting to the UN. The ‘List of Issues external URL ’ is the list of questions the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities wants the government to report back on.

This List of Issues (2018) has 100 questions which cover most articles in the Convention. For example, the List of Issues asks for information about education, employment, accessibility, health, data, seclusion and restraint. 

Read the Minister for Disability Issue's media release external URL .

The Government's report to the UN Disability Committee

The Government has written a report to answer the 100 questions asked by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This report was sent to the UN Committee on 9 March 2019.

The report provides information on what the Government has done over the past four years to put the Disability Convention into action. It includes information on education employment, health, justice, transport, housing, data, accessibility and much more.

The report provides a snapshot of where things are at currently. While good progress has been made there are still areas for improvement.

You can read the Government's response to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons for Disabilities here in various formats:

• The Government's response to the UN Committee (DOCX 205KB)
• Summary - The Government's response to the UN Committee (PDF 123KB)

Alternate formats

• New Zealand Sign Language - The Government's response to the UN Committee external URL
• Easy Read - The Government's response to the UN Committee (DOCX 6.7MB)
• Large Print - The Government's response to the UN Committee (PDF 123KB)

Next steps

The Government will be invited to Geneva to appear before the UN Committee. The Committee will then give the Government recommendations (called 'concluding observations') on what we can do to better implement the Disability Convention.

The Independent Monitoring Mechanism is running a separate process to provide feedback to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

The United Nations review process - key stages

1. The National Human Rights organisation provides a 'Shadow Report' to the UN Committee to help them decide what questions they should ask in the List of Issues
2. The 'List of Issues prior to reporting' (the list of questions) is released by the UN Committee - 13 March 2018
3. The 'State Party Report' (a report) is due to the UN Committee - 9 March 2019
4. New Zealand government delegation appears before the UN Committee (the review in Geneva) - September/October 2019
5. 'Concluding Observations' (recommendations) released by the UN Committee - October/November 2019 
6. Follow up response by New Zealand government to Concluding Observations (a report) - November 2019 onwards