Mme Marie Rabatel’s candidacy to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2028

France is putting forward the candidacy of Mme Marie Rabatel to be an expert on the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for the 2029-2032 term. The election will be held in New York in June 2028 at the 21st Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by France in 2010.

A former high-level athlete, human rights campaigner and pioneer in inclusion through sport, Marie Rabatel has built up her expertise in the field by working closely with people with disabilities and learning from her own experience as an autistic woman.

Mme Rabatel plays a major role in the defence, promotion and application of the rights of people with disabilities in France, particularly those of women and children. Heavily involved both at an institutional level – as an expert on violence and disability at the Ministry for Sport – and in the voluntary sector – she founded, and since 2016 has chaired, the Association Francophone des Femmes Autistes –, she contributes to the drafting and implementation of government policy and an appropriate legislative framework. Marie Rabatel is especially committed to preventing sexual violence against people with disabilities, especially minors: she worked as a teacher with children with disabilities for 15 years. In this regard, she is a permanent member of the Commission Indépendante sur l’Inceste et les Violences Sexuelles faites aux Enfants (CIIVISE – independent commission on incest and sexual violence against children).

By putting forward this candidacy, France reaffirms its commitment to fully implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to equality, to universal accessibility, to the fight against discrimination and to the participation of people with disabilities in the decisions affecting them.