Disability rights in the Commonwealth Caribbean: a capability and intersectional critique

This paper offers the largest empirical study to date of the rights of persons with disabilities in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Drawing on interviews, surveys, focus groups and consultations conducted across twelve jurisdictions between 2017 and 2022, it examines the persistent gap between the region’s formal commitments under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the lived realities of persons with disabilities. Deploying Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach, alongside intersectional theory, the paper argues that pervasive failures across education, health care, employment, social protection, accessibility and civic participation deprive persons with disabilities of the substantive freedoms necessary for human flourishing, with compounded effects for those experiencing multiple forms of marginalisation. Situating these findings within the region’s heterogeneous legislative landscape, and assessing Barbados’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2025 as the region’s most far-reaching statutory response, the paper contends that transforming disability rights from aspiration into substantive capability requires structural change that addresses the intersection of ableism with racism, sexism, classism and geography.