4. Arguments and scenarios

Photo: Rusi Stanev in front of the European Court of Human Rights, 2009. © MDAC.

“I’m not an object, I’m a person. I need my freedom.”

Rusi Stanev before the hearing of the
Grand Chamber of the European Court

The right to live in the community is like the head of an octopus, and its tentacles stretch into several other areas of law and human rights. It is MDAC’s experience that progress on one of these rights cannot be made without tackling related human rights violations. Cases on the right to live in the community are invariably innovative, as so few cases have yet been argued in the world, with even fewer being clearly based on human rights.

This chapter has two parts. The first sets out a pool of arguments which lawyers can deploy in the courtroom. The aim is to give lawyers an understanding of how the right to live in the community relates to other human rights provisions, particularly regarding the right to non-discrimination and the right to legal capacity. The chapter sets out how lawyers should nimbly use relevant provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and other human rights instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the European Social Charter (ESC) and other UN human rights treaties.

The second part of the chapter sets out five scenarios that reveal typical legal problems related to the right to community living, drawn from experience in Europe. Each scenario demonstrates how the arguments pool can be used to advance the client’s rights.