For two decades, Markus Schefer has been intimately involved in promoting anti-discrimination law. The deep injustices many people face, simply because of their disability, have urged him to devote his career as a professor to fighting them. In his first term on the CRPD Committee, he has intensively contributed to efforts aimed at ending discrimination in several countries.

Markus Schefer knows the legal complexities of the rights of persons with disabilities and has a deep understanding of the problems facing their implementation. His professional biography combines academic work on the rights of persons with disabilities with broad practical knowledge of the challenges they face in society. As the Rapporteur on Communications in the CRPD Committee, he has focused on strengthening the legal quality of the Committee’s individual communications.

Markus Schefer is fully independent. In the twenty years of his tenure as a full-time professor at the University of Basel, he has amply proven his independence, be it in the area of disability rights, in human rights discourse in general, as an expert witness in Parliamentary committees, or in his capacity as a member of a committee supervising an intelligence agency.

Many states face major problems implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities due to their federal structure. Markus Schefer is familiar with these questions. In addition to publishing on constitutional questions about federalism, he has advised several Cantons in the drafting of CRPD-implementing legislation.

Throughout his professional life, Markus Schefer has been closely working with civil society organizations of persons with disabilities. He has consistently been in close contact with persons with disabilities and understands the barriers they face and the remedies they require. Together with representatives of the umbrella organization of Swiss CSO’s for people with disabilities, he has instituted classes about disability law in the master’s program of his University and organizes annual conferences on disability law. He frequently advises Organizations of Persons with Disabilities on questions of litigation and cooperates with them in a wide variety of policy-related issues.

Markus Schefer has spent extended time in the United States, in India, and in South Africa gaining insight into the workings of their legal systems. His openness toward and interest in societies other than his native one, their specific characteristics, and inner mechanisms have allowed him to engage competently with the highly diverse countries the CRPD Committee reviews. He communicates in German, English and French. 

If re-elected, Markus Schefer will further contribute (1) to strengthening the legal quality of the Committee’s work and (2) to deepening the coordination of working methods among the many UN treaty bodies. He will (3) put a particular emphasis on the right of access to justice as an essential prerequisite for an effective protection of the rights of persons with disabilities.