CRC/C/GC/9 Page 2 the Child (hereafter “the Convention”) was the first human rights treaty that contained a specific reference to disability (article 2 on non-discrimination) and a separate article 23 exclusively dedicated to the rights and needs of children with disabilities. Since the Convention has entered into force (2 September 1990), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (thereafter “the Committee”) has paid sustained and particular attention to disabilitybased discrimination1 while other human rights treaty bodies have paid attention to disabilitybased discrimination under “other status” in the context of articles on non-discrimination of their relevant Convention. In 1994 the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued its general comment No. 5 on persons with disabilities and stated in paragraph 15 that “The effects of disability-based discrimination have been particularly severe in the fields of education, employment, housing, transport, cultural life, and access to public places and services.” The Special Rapporteur on disability of the United Nations Commission for Social Development was first appointed in 1994 and mandated to monitor of the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the General Assembly at its forty-eighth session in 1993 (A/RES/48/96, Annex), and to advance the status of persons with disabilities throughout the world. On 6 October 1997 the Committee devoted its day of general discussion to children with disabilities and adopted a set of recommendations (CRC/C/66, paragraphs 310-339), in which it considered the possibility of drafting a general comment on children with disabilities. The Committee notes with appreciation the work of the Ad-Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities, and that it adopted at its eighth session, held in New York on 25 August 2006, a draft convention on the rights of persons with disabilities to be submitted to the General Assembly at its sixty-first session (A/AC.265/2006/4, Annex II). 3. The Committee, in reviewing State party reports, has accumulated a wealth of information on the status of children with disabilities worldwide and found that in the overwhelming majority of countries some recommendations had to be made specifically to address the situation of children with disabilities. The problems identified and addressed have varied from exclusion from decision-making processes to severe discrimination and actual killing of children with disabilities. Poverty being both a cause and a consequence of disability, the Committee has repeatedly stressed that children with disabilities and their families have the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of their living conditions. The question of children with disabilities living in poverty should be addressed by allocating adequate budgetary resources as well as by ensuring that children with disabilities have access to social protection and poverty reduction programmes. 4. The Committee has noted that no reservations or declarations have been entered specifically to article 23 of the Convention by any State party. 5. The Committee also notes that children with disabilities are still experiencing serious difficulties and facing barriers to the full enjoyment of the rights enshrined in the Convention. The Committee emphasizes that the barrier is not the disability itself but rather a combination of social, cultural, attitudinal and physical obstacles which children with disabilities encounter in their daily lives. The strategy for promoting their rights is therefore to take the necessary action to remove those barriers. Acknowledging the importance of articles 2 and 23 1 See Wouter Vandenhole, Non-Discrimination and Equality in the View of the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies, p.170-172, Antwerpen/Oxford, Intersentia 2005.