‘They Guarantee Understanding Both Ways’: Rights Protection Officers as Facilitators of Access to Justice for Disabled Women

There is a distinct lack of research focused on access to justice for disabled women who have been subject to gender-based violence. Article 13 of the UNCRPD specifies that disabled people have the right to ‘effective access to justice’ on an equal basis with others. This includes the provision of procedural accommodations to facilitate disabled women’s participation in all legal proceedings. Using an interdisciplinary human rights approach together with qualitative methods, this paper focusses on the role of Rights Protection Officers (RPOs) as a procedural accommodation in enabling effective access
to justice for disabled women when detecting, reporting and prosecuting genderbased violence. Findings describe RPOs as helpful in the overall proceedings but a lack of knowledge about them among justice workers and disabled women raises concerns. The paper argues that disability-rights-based training and awareness raising about the provision of RPOs as well as strengthening of their role is vital to enable effective access to justice for disabled women.