A/HRC/37/56 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Catalina Devandas Aguilar, submits the present report to the Human Rights Council pursuant to Council resolutions 26/20 and 35/6. It contains a description of the activities she carried out in 2017 and a thematic study on the right of persons with disabilities to equal recognition as a person before the law. In preparing the study, the Special Rapporteur analysed the responses to a questionnaire sent to Member States, national human rights institutions, agencies of the United Nations system, civil society organizations and persons with disabilities and their representative organizations. She received 40 responses. 1 She also relied on information gathered during an expert meeting on supporting the autonomy and independence of older persons with disabilities, which took place in New York in October 2017. II. Activities of the Special Rapporteur A. Country visits 2. In 2017, the Special Rapporteur visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from 3 to 8 May (A/HRC/37/56/Add.1), Kazakhstan from 4 to 12 September (A/HRC/37/56/Add.2) and France from 3 to 13 October (report to be submitted to the fortieth session of the Council). She thanks the Governments concerned for their cooperation prior to, during and after the visit. 3. The Special Rapporteur has agreed to undertake a visit to Kuwait during the last quarter of 2018 and has requested invitations to visit Cambodia, Chile, Colombia and Saudi Arabia. She has also received an invitation to visit Algeria and Egypt. B. Engagement with stakeholders 4. During the year, the Special Rapporteur participated in numerous conferences and expert meetings, including the fifty-fifth session of the Commission for Social Development in New York in February, the fifth Pacific Regional Conference on Disability in Samoa, also in February, and the annual interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities at the Human Rights Council in March. She also co-organized expert consultations on disability assessment and on sexual and reproductive health and rights of girls and young women with disabilities jointly with other United Nations experts, agencies, international civil society organizations, organizations of persons with disabilities and academia. She actively promoted the establishment of a United Nations system-wide action plan on disability with the Inter-Agency Support Group for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 5. In June, she participated in the tenth session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and its parallel events. As mandated by the General Assembly, she continued to engage with the United Nations Statistical Division, the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators and several United Nations agencies to advocate for the use of the short set of questions of the Washington Group on Disability Statistics to disaggregate data by disability in the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals. 6. In July, she organized a meeting in Madrid with United Nations human rights experts to discuss the role of human rights mechanisms (treaty bodies and special procedures) to protect the rights of persons with disabilities and identify ways to enhance coherence and coordination in this area. In October, together with the Independent Expert 1 See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disability/SRDisabilities/Pages/LibertyAndSecurity.aspx. 3