CRPD as International Law

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Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

CRPD is a core human rights treaty of the United Nations, that is important for users and survivors of psychiatry. Our organizations were active in the drafting and negotiations and succeeded in getting a treaty that requires countries to abolish forced psychiatry.

CRPD text and its Optional Protocol (2006)

Background information on the UN website and Negotiation Archives (2002-2006) – CHRUSP president Tina Minkowitz represented the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in the drafting and negotiations and was one of the leaders of the International Disability Caucus

CRPD 101 presentation by Myra Kovary (summary of CRPD oriented to users and survivors of psychiatry) – see Abolishing Forced Psychiatry page for more information

Is your country a State party to the CRPD? Check ratifications to CRPD and Optional Protocol

Interested in attending the yearly CRPD Conference of States Parties (held in New York) to learn about implementation or share your own projects and ideas? Read here

CRPD Committee and Other Human Rights Mechanisms

Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – CRPD Committee is the committee of experts nominated and elected by States Parties that monitors compliance with the Convention.

CRPD Committee’s Work

  • Periodic review of each State Party through reporting process and interactive dialogue
  • Issuing General Comments and Guidelines
  • Considering individual complaints under the Optional Protocol (about countries that have ratified the OP)
  • Inquiries under the Optional Protocol to investigate systematic violations (in a country that has ratified the OP)
  • Disabled people’s organizations and individual people with disabilities (including survivors of psychiatry and our organizations) can participate in all these processes – learn how below.

To participate in the CPRD Committee’s review of your country, or observe their public meetings – check Sessions and see CRPD Committee home page for news and Information Briefings for Civil Society

To participate in consultations on CRPD General Comments on Guidelines, look for Calls for Inputs on CRPD Committee home page and subscribe to UN Human Rights Civil Society Weekly (which has information about all human rights mechanisms)

Other mechanisms may be useful also – see UN human rights instruments and mechanisms and human rights topics

Learn more about how to participate in reporting and consultations here from a survivor perspective – Using UN Human Rights Mechanisms by Tina Minkowitz

Consult these mainstream guides on reporting practices (but do not rely on them for human rights standards – out of date and may conflict with CRPD)

Key Materials Interpreting CRPD

CRPD Committee Key Documents

General Comment No. 1 on Article 12 with its Corrigendum (2014) determines that CRPD Article 12 requires full respect for legal capacity and decision-making of persons with disabilities at all times, including in crisis situations, that support can take many forms so long as it respects the will and preferences of the person, and that substitute decision-making must be eliminated.

Guidelines on liberty and security of the person (2015) recapitulates key points in the Committee’s Concluding Observations under Article 14, emphasizing the absolute prohibition of detention based on actual or perceived impairment, including any involuntary hospitalization in the mental health system, and 2) that in criminal proceedings, people with disabilities must have equal guarantees of due process, prohibiting both declarations of incapacity to be held responsible and the detentions resulting from such declarations.

Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization, including in Emergencies (2022) makes actionable the obligation to end involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and other forms of institutionalization, requiring immediate release with emergency assistance, support for those needing more time and planning to leave, reform of community-based services and supports, and measures to ensure a welcoming and accessible community for survivors of institutionalization. See especially paragraphs 10 and 76 for demedicalization of supports for people with psychosocial disabilities, and Section IX on Reparations. And see Commentary by Tina Minkowitz for more information.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Thematic study on legislative implementation of CRPD A/HRC/10/48 (2009) adopted abolition standard soon after CRPD entered into force. See paragraphs 43-50 on legal capacity and liberty.

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

The UN basic principles and guidelines on remedies and procedures for arbitrary deprivation of liberty A/HRC/30/37 (2015) instructs courts to apply an absolute prohibition to the deprivation of liberty based on disability, and indicates possible remedies to release individuals and issue systemic injunctions to end the violations. See Principle 20 and Guideline 20.

Special Rapporteur on Torture

The first ever report of a UN Special Rapporteur on Torture E/CN.4/1986/15 (Kooijmans, 1986) mentioned neuroleptic drugs as a form of physical torture (see paragraph 119).

Thematic report on torture and persons with disabilities A/63/175 (Nowak, 2008) noted that CRPD prohibits involuntary confinement and treatment, and applied CRPD to torture framework, adopting a standard WNUSP had promoted that forced or nonconsensual medical interventions to alleviate a disability may amount to torture or other ill treatment. Addresses forced medication, electroshock, restraint and solitary confinement, and indefinite detention.

Thematic report on torture in health-care context A/HRC/22/53 (MĂ©ndez, 2013) called for an absolute ban on forced psychiatric interventions based solely on disability, but equivocates on the prohibition of disability-based detention. See also Minkowitz Response (pp 227-246).

Thematic report on psychological torture A/HRC/43/49 (Melzer, 2021) views forced psychiatric interventions as discriminatory coercive control, says they ‘may well amount to torture’ (para 37), also explains concept of torturous environment, which may be useful for our purposes.

Special Rapporteur on Health

Special Rapporteur on Health, Report on the right to mental health (2017) promotes alternatives to coercion rather than immediate abolition as CRPD requires, but useful for critique of psychiatry.

Handover Dialogues (2020) – Legacy of Special Rapporteur on Health Dainius PĹ«ras – stronger on abolition

See Also

See Abolishing Forced Psychiatry and other pages in Library for additional UN materials.

Worth Noting for Advocacy

UN Mechanisms Contrary to CRPD

Human Rights Committee (monitoring body for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) General Comment 35, paragraph 19 (2014) retains a pre-CRPD approach that legitimizes forced psychiatry with procedural safeguards.

Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (which visits places of detention and sets standards for National Prevention Mechanisms) has upheld forced treatment (2016) as necessary for the right to health, contrary to the CRPD. However, in a recent General Comment (2024) the SPT indicates openness to the CRPD standard requiring informed consent.

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is a UN agency that makes policy on health, including mental health. Prior to recent work incorporating the CRPD standards, they promoted mental health legislation to regulate involuntary measures.

In 2012, they began to incorporate CRPD into their Quality Rights Toolkit, while not yet endorsing an end to involuntary hospitalization. From 2019-2023, they issued additional documents under the Quality Rights Project that embraced CRPD standard in principle, but remain problematic for lingering medicalization and paternalism.

WHO’s apparent embrace of the CRPD is useful in advocacy, for the purpose of undermining resistance to abolition. However, we caution against using WHO’s materials as substantive guidance so that we retain our independence from the health system in interpreting and applying our human rights. Read CHRUSP et al joint statement here and Tina’s interventions in 2024 OHCHR Consultation on Mental Health and Human Rights here (morning and afternoon panels).

Find WHO’s materials here and compare with CRPD Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization and the book by Tina Minkowitz Reimagining Crisis Support/ Reimaginar el Apoyo en Crisis.

Regional Human Rights Treaties and Mechanisms

Americas

OAS Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (CIADDIS)

CEDDIS (monitoring committee of CIADDIS) – General Observation No. 1 on legal capacity (2010) in Spanish – applies CRPD Article 12 to interpretation of CIADDIS, to prohibit legal incapacitation and guardianship

CEDDIS Practical Guide on establishment of supports in exercise of legal capacity (2021) in Spanish, English, Portuguese

Africa

Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s and Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa (2018) – incorporates CRPD standards on legal capacity and liberty, and makes explicit the prohibition of forced medical interventions under the freedom from torture.

African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Principles on the Decriminalisation of Petty Offences in Africa (2018) – useful in working for reform or replacement of police and penal systems, which disproportionately target people with disabilities, racialized minorities, and other marginalized groups.

Europe

The European Convention on Human Rights, Article 5.1(e), authorizes detention based on ‘unsound mind,’ contrary to the CRPD. The Bioethics Convention also authorizes forced treatment in Article 7, and a draft additional Protocol is being considered to regulate forced treatment in detail. Survivors, the disability movement, and numerous UN mechanisms, as well as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, oppose the draft Protocol and call for it to be withdrawn.

The European Court of Human Rights has a dismal record of tolerating forced psychiatry, see MDAC Summaries of Mental Disability Cases (2007). More recently there is an opening to CRPD standards but not yet full abolition as required.

Hege Orefellen summarized our movement’s demands in a presentation that was invited and then cancelled. Read also the statement by We Shall Overcome, Survivors of psychiatry silenced at Council of Europe high level conference.

Documents from the Parliamentary Assembly, UN mechanisms, and civil society on need for Europe to align with CRPD:

National Law Reforms Implementing CRPD

Peru

Legislative decree No. 1384 – legal capacity reform (2018) in Spanish and in English with commentary – the first reform to systematically follow General Comment No. 1. Background documents illustrate the process:

Mental health regulations (in Spanish) – involuntary confinement permitted for 72 hours but subject to ‘best interpretation’ criteria and process as detailed in legal capacity reform

Commentary on Peruvian legal capacity reform (2018)

Colombia

Law 1996 – legal capacity reform (2019) (in Spanish) – the second reform after Peru’s to comply with CRPD, more emphasis on proceedings and more detail on supporters’ obligations.

CHRUSP Amicus brief supporting the reform and advocating strong view of respect for will and preferences in all matters.

Mexico

Decision by CRPD Committee in Arturo Medina Vela case (2019), requiring Mexico to eliminate ‘inimputabilidad’ – incapacity to be held criminally responsible.

Health law reform (2022) – Spanish and English – recognizes legal capacity and right to free and informed consent of the person concerned in mental health decisions.

Redesfera regional report on CRPD (in Spanish, 2023) says Mexico’s reform is sufficient to prohibit forced interventions.

Legal capacity reform in national procedural code (2023) (paragraphs 445-455).

Mexico City civil code reform (2024) – complying with national reform, must be done in all other states of Mexico.

United States

Judge Kristen Booth Glen invoked CRPD Article 12 to require supported decision-making as a less restrictive measure than guardianship for people with intellectual disabilities – In re Dameris L (2012). This is only a limited reform and not true compliance, but shows the potential for CRPD to influence countries that are not states parties. Judge Glen subsequently launched the Supported Decision-Making Project of New York.