Certain forms of abuses in health-care settings that may cross a threshold of mistreatment that is tantamount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 2013, para. 68
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- Involuntary commitment to psychiatric institutions has been well documented. There are well-documented examples of people living their whole lives in such psychiatric or social care institutions. The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been very explicit in calling for the prohibition of disability-based detention, i.e. civil commitment and compulsory institutionalization or confinement based on disability. It establishes that community living, with support, is no longer a favourable policy development but an internationally recognized right. The Convention radically departs from this approach by forbidding deprivation of liberty based on the existence of any disability, including mental or intellectual, as discriminatory. Article 14, paragraph 1 (b), of the Convention unambiguously states that "the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty". Legislation authorizing the institutionalization of persons with disabilities on the grounds of their disability without their free and informed consent must be abolished. This must include the repeal of provisions authorizing institutionalization of persons with disabilities for their care and treatment without their free and informed consent, as well as provisions authorizing the preventive detention of persons with disabilities on grounds such as the likelihood of them posing a danger to themselves or others, in all cases in which such grounds of care, treatment and public security are linked in legislation to an apparent or diagnosed mental illness (A/HRC/10/48, paras. 48, 49).
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Persons with disabilities
- Year
- 2013
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Paragraph number
- 68
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