On April 20, the Day of People with Disabilities, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) analyzed the number of complaints against discrimination of disablilites for the past five years. After the establishment of the NHRCK, and through the cases that accepted for recommendation and the cases that did not accept, we hereby seek the issues on discrimination and direction in our society.
By the end of March 2007, complaints against discrimination received by the NHRCK totaled 3,195; and 12.6%, or 401 complaints, were complaints against discrimination of disablities. This is the second largest number of complaints against discrimination by social status (24.4%, or 692 cases). Considering that there are diverse kinds of social identifies, it is considered as the most significant number of discrimination against people with disablities as a single cause. The fact that the complaints against discrimination of disablities in the first three months of 2007 reached 60 indicates that society is particularly prejudiced against people with disablities. With the Disability Discrimination Act that will be implemented in April 2008, complaints against discrimination of disablities are expected to increase.
The NHRCK has disposed 289 complaints against discrimination of disablities and the types of disposition are 28 cases of recommendation (9.7%), 74 cases of resolution during the investigation (25.6%), 8 cases of stipulated completion (2.8%), 3 cases of reconciliation (1.0%), 34 cases of dismissal (11.8%, excluding 5 cases of dissolution during the investigation), 140 cases of rejection (48.3%, excluding 69 cases of resolution during the investigation) and others that the action taken to relief of damage is shown to be 39.1%.
Discrimination of people with disablities is evident in many aspects of society, such as employment, education, transportation, and voting rights. The NHRCK has been working on eliminating acts of discrimination of disablities through complaints and even without complaints as well. To this point, the complaint on the discrimination against people with disablities has been partially improved through the accommodation of recommendation, agreement of parties, establishment of reconciliation, resolution of complaints during the investigation, and others, however, there are many cases to review the accommodations or not accommodating the recommendation of discrimination improvement that the resolution on this part has been remained as the task of the NHRCKK.
*Resolution: It means the cases to resolve the complaints during the investigation. In this case, the figures involving the resolution during the investigation are in the number of cases for dismissal or rejection in statistics, however, considering that the purpose of relief from the NHRCK is in the quick and efficient relief of right through the stipulation or adjustment between the petitioner and the respondent, the resolution during the investigation is considered as the positive model to strive for the complaints.
