Since the recent passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), governments across the world have enacted laws aimed at promoting, protecting and ensuring the fundamental freedoms and basic dignities of persons with disabilities. Federal Law No. 29 of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one such law and is used by the author as a case study to illuminate the challenges of adapting international human rights norms on the local level. The study attempts to answer: How successful has the Government of the UAE and particularly the local government of the Emirate of Dubai been in implementing Federal Law 29 of 2006?

A mixed method case study attempts to answer this question by assessing (1) the content of legislative measures in the UAE, (2) the administrative and coordinating capacity of the implementing federal and local agencies, (3) executive and budgetary support for the law, (4) social attitudes toward persons with disabilities in Dubai and (5) participation of persons with disabilities in the public sphere. These features constitute the unique social and institutional arrangements that affect the successful implementation of both the CRPD and UAE Federal Law No. 29 in Dubai.

The case study is grounded on the Capability Model of Disability (CMD). There are three fundamental features of the CMD that are insightful and forward thinking. First, it characterizes disability as a fundamental failure between an agent and his or her physical, social, and institutional environment along some dimension instead of being a deviation from the norm of human functioning. Second, it introduces the concept of salience to measure local attitudes toward persons with disabilities relative to international norms. Finally it offers practitioners a development-based framework along nine dimensions—four basic functionings (health, rehabilitation, education and employment) and five basic freedoms (political and public participation, being included in the community, accessibility, mobility, and awareness raising). The model's features mitigate past failures and can guide successful outcomes for disability-related policy approaches.

This study found that (1) legislative measures do not address disability as a fundamental failure between the agent and his/her environment, (2) the UAE has sufficient administrative capacity but insufficient coordinating capacity to address disability from a development-based framework, (3) sufficient executive support but insufficient budgetary support exists to support the law, (4) social attitudes are strongly congruent to international norms along the dimensions of education, health and employment and strongly incongruent along the dimensions of rehabilitation, political and public participation and independent living (5) considerable social and institutional resistance precludes persons with disabilities from participating in public life. Dubai thus obtained average results in ensuring basic functionings and weak results in ensuring basic freedoms. The author recommends that the Supreme Council implement article 33 of the CRPD and establish a strong federal council on disability to monitor the implementation of the law. This council would coordinate both top down and bottom up reforms while building capacity across different sectors and scales of government. Finally it would ensure that persons with disabilities participate in the development of policies and laws that affect them.