Legal aspects of people with disabilities

• LSU talpykla: numerio tekstas

ENThe number of the disabled in Lithuania corresponds to the United Nations data, which shows that people with disabilities account for about 10 percent of the global population18. The study of the Lithuanian Union of Students (LSS)19 revealed only a quarter of Lithuanian higher schools are designed for individuals with mobility disabilities. In 2013, about three thousand persons with disabilities were employed, i.e. every tenth handicapped unemployed who had registered at the labour exchange. Disabled persons in Lithuania face social discrimination from potential employers. Quite often, the latter even do not analyse the situation thoroughly, they just refuse to employ people with disabilities. It is explained by low labour productivity and economic inefficiency of the disabled; employers are also afraid of taking responsibility for people with disabilities supposing the risk of their health deterioration. A disabled person can choose what he or she wants and is able to do, and a public responsibility is to help them achieve it. The first very important step in the consolidation of the status of persons with disabilities was made in 1997 with the signing of the Amsterdam Treaty of the European Union20, including Article 13, which established the need to “take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”. For a long time, however, disability was treated as a medical problem, not as a human rights’ issue concentrated on a person with a physical, mental, and intellectual or other impairment. This article aims at conveying the peculiarities of the disabled individual’s legal status. [From the publication]