A UN committee found Friday that Mexico failed to ensure inclusive education for a woman with an intellectual disability. Selene Militza García Vara brought a claim before the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the grounds that the Morelense Centre for Art had not appropriately secured inclusive access to tertiary education.
The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is responsible for monitoring States parties’ compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Mexico is a signatory of. The Convention prioritizes “recognising the importance of accessibility to…education” and realising this right “without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity”.
The Committee ruled that Mexico had not ensured the accessibility of the Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Morelense Centre for Art by failing to take sufficient measures to make it possible for Vara to access the Centre. They also considered that, in this specific case, the Morelense Centre for Arts should have begun a dialogue with the claimant to determine what adjustments were needed for her to take the admission tests. The Committee ultimately stated that the State has an “obligation” to adhere to reasonable accommodations.
The claimant argued that she had not been provided with the necessary reasonable adjustments to allow to her to sit the test on an equal basis to those applicants without a disability. She was not admitted to the programme as the assessment was designed for candidates without disabilities. The Dean of the Centre subsequently informed the claimant that there was no budget for admitting people with intellectual disabilities and that the programme was designed for students without disabilities.
The Committee described how this was not an isolated case but instead indicative of the structural challenges faced by people with intellectual disabilities in Mexico. The Human Rights Watch has previously criticised Mexico for the lack of a “rigorous track record” on the issue.
