Abstract:

Croatia was among the first countries in the world to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By signing the Convention, Croatia comitted itself to implement this document in its entierety, which will ensure equal opportunities and improve the quality of life for persons with disabilities and their families. One of the most important areas of the Convention is education.

The signatory countries must recognize the right of persons with disabilities to education. In order to realize this right without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunities, the participating countries will ensure the inclusion of the education system as well as enabling lifelong learning for persons with disabilities. The signatory countries are also obliged to enable persons with disabilities to learn life and social development skills to facilitate their full and equal participation in education and life as members of the community. To this end, the signatory countries will, among other things, promote peer support.

In 2015, Croatia presented the first results of work done on the basis of the signed Convention. The United Nations Committee was generally satisfied with Croatia's efforts and implementations, but found and expressed some concerns and recommendations for specific areas of the Convention.The Committee recommended that Croatia, as a signatory state, takes immediate steps to ensure that all persons with disabilities have access to inclusive primary, secondary and tertiary education, and in addition, reasonable adjustment for persons with disabilities within regular education.

One of the activities that enable reasonable adjustment is promoting peer support. The project "Let them learn" is a project of the student association at Faculty of Economics in Zagreb (Association of Managers of the Faculty of Economics) and organized with the intent to enable students with disabilities at the Faculty of Economics to overcome everyday obstacles during their stay at the faculty as easilly as possible. This project enables students with disabilities to have an educational assistant who is attending lectures with them and helps them with everyday faculty activities such as: going to a lecture, making notes and following lectures, dressing and undressing, communication with professors and assistants, feeding assistance in a faculty restaurant if necessary, accompanying a disabled student to the toilet if necessary as well as socializing and integrating the disabled student in society and encouraging the creation of self-confidence.

The "Let them learn" project has left a significant impression in academic circles, and positive comments about educational assistance are continually coming in. In the period of two and a half years, 8 disabled students were provided with educational assistance and were extremely satisfied. This project is extremely innovative and useful and we believe that it must continue in the generations to come, because persons with disabilities require actual help during their stay at the faculty, and the UN Convention itself advises it.

Keywords:

Disability, peer support, education.