Abstract
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) requires that people with disabilities, including those with mental disabilities (be they psychosocial disabilities/mental health problems or learning disabilities), be able to enjoy full human rights without discrimination. This requirement for non-discrimination, coupled with requirements for social inclusion, chime effectively with the aims of the anti-stigma movement. At the same time, the CRPD will introduce tensions with anti-stigma agendas. Its provisions apply only to people who have a disability, creating the risk that people will need to be identified as having a disability to benefit from its provisions, creating the risk of stigma at that point. The CRPD’s fundamental move away from a medical model of disability will also require the development of new social relationships and new ways of thinking by the professionals who have traditionally been important to the anti-stigma movement, creating potential political difficulties for the movement. This paper looks at these synergies and tensions between the Convention provisions and the anti-stigma movement.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Statement of Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General (2006).
- 2.
United Nations A/Res/61/106 (general assembly, 24 January 2007).
- 3.
In this chapter, ‘mental disabilities’ is taken to include disabilities related to development such as learning disabilities, psychosocial disabilities (disabilities traditionally associated with mental ill health), disabilities flowing from injury to the brain and mental disabilities associated with later life such as dementia.
- 4.
A list of signatories and ratifications may be found at http://www.un.org/disabilities/. Accessed 24 November 2014. An additional eight countries have signed but not yet ratified the CRPD – so more than 82 % of UN member states have signed the Convention.
- 5.
CRPD, Article 1.
- 6.
CRPD, Article 3 (a) to (e). Additional principles contained in Article 3 include accessibility (relevant primarily for people with physical disabilities rather than mental disabilities), equality between men and women, acknowledgment of the evolving capacities of children and respecting the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.
- 7.
CRPD, Article 1.
- 8.
CRPD, Article 33.
- 9.
CRPD, Article 31.
- 10.
CRPD, Article 35.
- 11.
See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/CRPDIndex.aspx, accessed 25 November 2014. At the time of writing, concluding comments had been written for New Zealand, Denmark, the Republic of Korea, Belgium, Ecuador, Mexico, El Savador, Azerbaijan, Costa Rica, Sweden, Australia, Austria, Paraguay, China, Hungary, Argentina, Spain, Tunisia and Peru.
- 12.
A copy of the first protocol, along with a list of countries ratifying it, may be found at http://www.un.org/disabilities/, accessed 25 November 2014.
- 13.
CRPD, Article 2.
- 14.
CRPD, Article 2. Note that ‘accommodation’ is not in this context a term referring to physical accommodation or housing. That is covered in Article 28 (as part of the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection) and by implication in a number of other articles. ‘Reasonable accommodation’ requires modifications and adjustments in all of the areas governed by the CRPD. While ‘reasonable accommodation’ reflects a long legal usage in anti-discrimination law, ‘reasonable adjustments’ or ‘reasonable adaptations’ may be more useful to non-lawyers in understanding the concept.
- 15.
CRPD, Articles 6 and 7. Perhaps surprisingly, and unfortunately, there is no express article protecting the specific needs of people based on race or other demographic criteria. While this is acknowledged in the recitals at the beginning (see recital (p), located prior to Article 1), it is not reflected in specific articles in the Convention.
- 16.
On the drafting history, see Lawson (2006).
- 17.
See, e.g., MacKay (2006). While this is generally a fair reading of the CRPD, there has been some debate as to whether the new right to integrity of the person (Article 17) is merely a re-statement of an existing right or is instead an extension of previous conventions. Certainly, it does not appear expressly in other conventions. On this point, see Quinn (2009), Weller (2008), Kayess and French (2008), Mégret (2008).
- 18.
There are of course a wide array of other reasons why rights may be curtailed. The point here is not that fundamental human rights may never be curtailed, but rather that the effects on stigmatisation is not a reason for doing so.
- 19.
CRPD Article 1.
- 20.
CRPD, Article 25 (b).
- 21.
United Nations Mental Illness Principles, adopted by General Assembly resolution 46/119 (17 December 1991), principle 3.
- 22.
CRPD, Article 19.
- 23.
Regarding compulsory admission, see UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2009). This is further consistent with a number of the Committee’s concluding observations on individual countries. Regarding compulsory treatment, see Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez to the United Nations General Assembly, A/HRC/22/53 (1 February 2013). A volume of papers reflecting on this report has been published as Torture in Healthcare Settings: Reflections on the Special Rapporteur on Torture’s 2013 Thematic Report (Washington: Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University Washington College of Law, 2014). It is available at http://antitorture.org/torture-in-healthcare-publication/. Accessed 29 November 2014.
- 24.
To put it another way, while reasonable accommodations are limited to responses that do not impose a disproportionate or undue burden [CRPD Article 2], the CRPD says nothing about how to understand situations where reasonable accommodation cannot realise the right in question. It would be unthinkable, given the ethos of the Convention, that people with disabilities in this circumstance do not acquire rights under the Convention, but the Convention does not articulate how those rights are to be understood.
- 25.
CRPD Committee, General Comment on Article 12, CRPD/C/GC/1 (19 May 2014). For a discussion of this article in an English context, see Bartlett (2012).
- 26.
- 27.
For discussions of capacity and guardianship that raise some of these issues, see the country reports of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) relating to Serbia, Russia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Kyrgystan from 2006 to 2007 available at http://www.mdac.info/en/resources?goal=137&format=144&page=1. Accessed 17 November 2014.
- 28.
- 29.
Priebe et al. (2011).
References
Bartlett P (2012) The United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and mental health law. Mod Law Rev 75(5):752–778
Churchill R, Owen G, Singh S. Hothopf M (2007) International experiences of using community treatment orders. King’s College London, London
Dawson J, Szmukler G (2006) Fusion of mental health and incapacity legislation. Br Med J 188:504
Horne J, Richardon G (eds) (2010) A model law fusing incapacity and mental health legislation – is it viable; is it advisable? J Mental Health Law (Being a special issue 20)
Kayess R, French P (2008) Out of darkness into light? Introducing the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. HRLRev 8:1 at 29
Kisely S, Campbell LA, Preston N (2005) Compulsory community and involuntary outpatient treatment for people with severe mental disorders (Review). Cochrane Library (3)
Lawson A (2006–2007) The United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities: new era or false dawn? Syracuse J Int’l Law Com 34:563 at 593–595
MacKay D (2006–2007) The United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Syracuse. J Int’l Law Com 34:323–331
Mégret F. (2008) The disabilities convention: human rights of persons with disabilities or disability rights? Hum Rights Q 30:494 at 507
Priebe S et al (2011) Predictors of clinical and social outcomes following involuntary hospital admissions. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 261:377
Quinn G (2009) Brining the UN Convention on rights for persons with disabilities to live in Ireland. Br J Learn Disab 37:245 at 247
Rees N (2010) The fusion proposal: a next step?. In: McSherry B, Weller P (eds). Rethinking rights-based mental health laws. Hart, Oxford
Statement of Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, on the occasion of the passage of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 13 December 2006. Full text available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2006/sgsm10797.doc.htm. Accessed 25 Nov 2014
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Annual Report, A/HRC/10/48 (2009) at [48], CRPD Committee, CRPD Committee, Statement on article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, September 2014. Available at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15183&LangID=E. Accessed 17 Nov 2014
United Nations A/Res/61/106 (general assembly, 24 January 2007). The full text of the CRPD may be found at http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=199. Accessed 25 Nov 2014
Weller P (2008) Supported decision-making and the achievement of non-discrimination: the promise and paradox of the disabilities convention. In: McSherry B (ed), International trends in mental health law. Federation Press, Sydney, pp 85 at 89
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bartlett, P. (2017). Stigma, Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In: Gaebel, W., Rössler, W., Sartorius, N. (eds) The Stigma of Mental Illness - End of the Story?. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27839-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27839-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27837-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27839-1
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)