Inclusive higher education for people with intellectual disability: obligations for higher education institutions under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Abstract Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), ratified by 185 of the 193 UN Member States, provides an explicit right to “inclusive education” for people with disabilities in higher education, including those with intellectual disability (ID). However, inclusive higher education for people with ID remains under researched. This paper analyses how inclusive education is conceptualised in the UNCRPD and the obligations created for higher education institutions in relation to people with ID. It does this by drawing on a General Comment, Concluding Observations and views adopted by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities under Article 5 of the Optional Protocol to the UNCRPD in response to a complaint brought by a person with ID who faced barriers to accessing tertiary education in Mexico (United Nations, 2023). The paper also explores what inclusive higher education provision for students with ID, built around UNCRPD rights-based principles, looks like in practice. This is illustrated by description of a rights-based model of inclusive higher education, informed by principles of inclusive education as articulated in the UNCRPD which is offered to people with ID in an Irish university, thereby offering a European perspective. Empirical research from University College Cork (UCC) presented in this paper indicates that introducing inclusive higher education can benefit all students and not just those with ID.