“Today and every day, let us fully recognize the active and diverse contributions of persons with autism to our societies,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Let us work together with persons with autism to build an inclusive and accessible world for all.”
Despite important progress, he said, persons with autism continue to face social and environmental barriers to the full exercise of their rights and fundamental freedoms, in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
“We must do better, by promoting inclusive education, equal employment opportunities, self-determination, and an environment where every person is respected,” he said.
“As we do so, we also recognize the role of families, caregivers, and support networks in the lives of persons with autism.”
Global event
A UN-hosted global virtual event, Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All, will feature autistic people from around the world discussing how the transformation in the narrative around neurodiversity can continue to be furthered in order to overcome barriers and improve the lives of autistic people.
The event will also address the contributions that autistic people make – and can make – to society, and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The event, to be held on Sunday, can be streamed here.
Aniket Kadam was one of the panelists at the pre-recorded UN event for World Autism Awareness Day, held on 2 April, on the subject of work within the global theme “Transformation: Toward a Neuro-Inclusive World for All”.
“On the day we visited Jindairis in northern Syria, one of the areas most affected by the February earthquake, the weather conditions were very bad. A mobile medical clinic housed in a tent was lifted off the ground by high winds scattering supplies and medical instruments.
Young girls play at a reception center for displaced people in Jindairis, Aleppo governorate.
The dreams of the children in this camp are simple. One told me that she needs glasses, another decent shoes so she can walk the camp’s unpaved roads. A young girl, Ahlam, told me all she just wanted was to go back to school. A mother asked for a wheelchair for her 20-year-old daughter.
Earthquake experience
In another camp, in Idleb, called Kammonah I met Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah whose suffering reflects the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who were made homeless as a result of the earthquake.
She told me how at four o’clock in the morning she felt shaking but didn’t know what was happening. Her children told her not to be afraid and after they all left their house it collapsed. It was rainy and they were shivering from cold, but didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah has been living in a tent following the earthquake.
They ended up at Kammonah camp and were advised to sign up for a shelter. A month after the quake they are still living in a tent with two other families.
Yazi Khaled Al-Abdullah told me that she loves to cook but doesn’t have pots or a gas stove. Sometimes prepared food, usually rice, is provided, but she has diabetes, so is not getting the nutrition that she needs.
She and her family are desperate to return home even if that means living a very basic life. She used an Arabic expression which says that even if they have only dirt to eat, they still want to go back to their hometown.
Her family left Sinjar eight years ago because of the war in Syria and spent time here and there. She told me her son and husband were working their land and tending sheep when they were killed by a plane. In her words, they have become martyrs.
I also met Mazyad Abdul Majeed Al-Zayed, who runs the Ajnadayn camp in Jindairis and who himself is a victim of the earthquake.
He explained the difficult conditions in which the camp residents live, due to a shortage of everything, including tents. Mobile clinics operate in the area, but they lack medicine and come only sporadically.
Mazyad Abdel-Majeed Al-Zayed, manages Ajnadayn camp in Jindairis.
He said the camp is miserable and that he did not bring his family here as he could not bear to see them live in such conditions.
Later I visited tents set up opposite the Al-Rafa Specialized Hospital in Jindairis, which housed mobile clinics, including one for children and one for women.
Patients and visitors are received daily in these clinics, which were established several days after the earthquake.
The hospital is surrounded by destroyed buildings, and the medical staff live and work in the same conditions as the people they are treating.
The medical system in this part of Syria was overburdened even before the earthquake, and now the medical staff is exhausted and equipment is almost completely broken.
Countless people affected by the earthquake have sought refuge in this area in northwestern Syria. Many did so to escape the war which has been raging for 12 years now.
The UN launched a $400 million humanitarian appeal to support displaced families.
A woman I spoke to said she had no idea what her future would hold having fled over a period of five years from Saraqib to Afrin, which was bombed, and then to Jindairis.
I met and spoke to so many people including young unaccompanied children who had been separated from their parents, whose lives had been upended by the war and then the earthquake.
But I also met people who had hope and optimism for a brighter future. I met diligent and caring aid workers who partner the UN and who try every day to improve the lives of those affected.
Meanwhile, the UN has launched a $400 million humanitarian appeal, and continues to work with its partners to ensure that relief supplies reach the most vulnerable people.
European Jewis Community Centre / The Embassies of the United Arab Emirates and Israel will co-host with the EuropeanJewish Community Centre the celebration of the Abrahamic Accords on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. at the Steigenberger Wiltcher’s Hotel, delivering a strong message of peace and understanding for the Jewish and Arab communities.
(Brussels, March 29, 2023) The Abrahamic Accords (A. A.) anniversary was celebrated on Wednesday, March 29,2023 at 6:30 p.m. at Steigenberger Wiltcher’s Hotel. This event was organized by the European Jewish Community Centre (EJCC) and co-hosted by the Embassies of the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
The political representatives of the four signatories of these agreements were present, namely the Ambassadors of Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Israel as well as the Ambassador of the United States.
The Abraham Accords – This Middle East peace treaty may have been difficult to implement, but its impact has exceeded all expectations. One of the results is the cross-cultural atmosphere created by the A. A. and which went beyond the borders of the nations involved in the treaty.
This mutual interest and genuine friendship between Arab and Jewish communities around the world has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to embark on a new wave of cross-cultural tourism and spontaneous cross-cultural gatherings between local communities around the world.
Signed just under three years ago, the A. A. marks and celebrates this new era that will encourage others to follow suit and be part of this vision of the future where ancient traditions inspire growth and modernity in harmony and respect for our differences.
Photo credit: www.bxl-media.com
The event hosted EU officials, the Czech Commissioner for Enlargement, members of the Jewish community, the Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels Rabbi Guigui, the executive representation of the Muslims of Belgium, as well as Lahcen Hammouch, founder of BXL-MEDIA group, among others.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates celebrated in Brussels anniversary of Abraham Accords 15
This event saw the presentation of the Abraham Award to the four Ambassadors who signed the treaty: H.E. Mohammed Al Sahlawi (UAE), H.E. Haïm Regev (Israel), H.E. Mohammed Ameur (Morocco), H.E. Ahmed Mohamed Aldoseri (Bahrain) as well as to the Ambassador of the United States, H.E Mark Gitenstein.
Manfred Profazi, who is based in Vienna, Austria, has been touring some of the regions in Ukraine which have been most seriously affected by over 13 months of conflict following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He has told UN News what he’s been seeing across the devastated country and how IOM has provided comfort to people forced to flee their homes due to the fighting and bombardment of civilian areas.
“Travelling in Ukraine these days isn’t easy. When I served as Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration from 2012 to 2017, it was possible to fly, or take one of the modern trains across the length and breadth of this vast country.
Now flying is completely impossible, and travel by train still fraught.
My journey this week in Ukraine, from Odesa and Mykolaiv in the south, Dnipro in the east, up to the capital Kyiv and again west to Lviv, was, for security reasons, by road.
It gave me ample time to reflect on the millions of Ukrainians that have taken the same roads to escape the danger and destruction since the start of the war.
Millions of people are in a state of flux, caught between being displaced in their own land, or with their families torn apart. Some stay in Ukraine because they cannot afford to leave, for some because leaving is simply not an option
A group of mainly women and children arrive in Kyiv in April 2022 after being evacuated from the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Over 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, another 5.3 million are internally displaced. Many people have been displaced several times. Some have travelled abroad, come back, settled, and left again as the frontline changes.
This feeling of dislocation even affects communities and people that have not relocated. Communities have been crushed, unsettled, scattered. The damage in places like Mykolaiv, and countless small towns and villages I passed through this week, scars the landscape and the emotions.
Mykolaiv has been under daily shelling for more than 250 days. Water pipes have been heavily hit. We see people queueing up for drinking water at public distribution points, some of them established by IOM, as we pass through the city.
Rising from the rubble
The living conditions are very hard for locals and internally displaced people alike. And yet, people stay. People are returning. More than 5.6 million. People are adapting to being in new host communities, and are bringing their skills and their experience to help rebuild their new home.
Of course, rebuilding and reconstruction in the middle of a war is challenging, to put it mildly, but everywhere I went, I saw new infrastructure rising from the rubble. Much of it, I am proud and humbled to say, has been installed by IOM and by organizations working with us, and with local authorities, who have done so much to keep hope alive.
One of many examples is a mobile heating plant, essentially the hangar of a 40-tonne truck, specially adapted to provide heat to a children’s hospital, where hundreds of children – local and displaced – can receive uninterrupted treatment. Blackouts caused by the shelling brought the heating system down, and for several days, the young patients stayed in freezing conditions.
IOM Regional Director Manfred Profazi talks to Valeria about her life as a resident in an IOM-supported dormitory in Dnipro.
I was lucky enough to be able to hear first-person accounts of survival, of resilience, and even optimism from young and old alike. These stories, and the dedication of our staff, keep all of us motivated and focussed on our assistance, and on facilitating recovering without fostering dependency.
Looking back, I’m thinking of Valeriia and her son, who fled the destruction of Bakhmut and are now finally in decent accommodations, thanks to IOM-organized repair works to a dormitory in Dnipro.
She showed me photos of her home, now completely destroyed, and spoke wistfully of her market garden. Now she grows a few greens in a window box. Her son, a diligent student, follows his lessons on a mobile phone, as he doesn’t even have a laptop. They have not given up; they do whatever it takes to retain a simulacrum of normal life.
IOM’s integrated approach allows us to support displaced people and host communities on multiple levels and provide them with a full range of services from infrastructure to income-generation.
We will continue our efforts to support them as long as needed in all the ways we can.”
“It is now time to bring them home,” they said. “Many children are now entering their fifth year of detention in northeast Syria, since they were detained by the de facto authorities following the fall of Baghouz in early 2019.”
They called on all actors to ensure the immediate safety and protection of all children, regardless of their location in northeastern Syria to prevent them from suffering further harm.
States have an obligation to protect vulnerable children from abuse and possible violations of their right to life, as recognized by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
“Their best interests as extremely vulnerable children must be reinstated as a guiding principle together with their primary status as victims of terrorism and as children in need of special protection under international law,” they said.
Al-Hol and Roj are the two largest locked camps for women, girls, and young boys, holding about 56,000 individuals, including 37,000 foreign nationals. Over half of the population in the camps are children, of which 80 per cent are under the age of 12 and 30 per cent under five.
There are also over 850 boys deprived of their liberty in prisons and other detention centres, including supposed rehabilitation centres, throughout northeast Syria.
Egregious rights violations
The mass detention of children for what their parents may have done is an egregious violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits all forms of discrimination and punishment of a child based on the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of their parents, the experts said.
“These children are detained without any legal basis, judicial authorization, review, control, or oversight, in violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which affirms no child shall be deprived of liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily,” they said.
‘No place for children’
Most children have known nothing but conflict and closed camps, where the life conditions amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and pose an imminent risk to their lives, physical and mental integrity, and development.
“These squalid camps are no place for children to live with dignity,” the experts said. “They lack access to the most basic needs such as medical treatment and health services, food, water, and education.”
Protection, not punishment
Amid a deteriorating security situation, the experts said all children in this conflict zone deserve to be protected, not punished.
“These children are victims of terrorism and of very serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and must be treated with dignity in all contexts, whether armed conflict or terrorism,” the experts said. “Safe return to their home countries, in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the only solution and must be prioritized.
“States must urgently repatriate children, together with their mothers – a solution that we now know is eminently feasible,” they said. “We note that it is of the utmost importancethat comprehensive rehabilitation programmes are in place when children are repatriated.”
About Special Rapporteurs
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva. These independent experts are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
OCHA Spokesperson Jens Laerke, told reporters in Geneva that the current phase was still “a humanitarian emergency where we look at, ‘What do the survivors need? How can we support those who have survived this devastating earthquake?’”
In Türkiye, where over nine million have been directly affected, the UN and partners have been supporting the Government-led response, reaching some four million people with basic household items and almost three million people with food assistance.
More than 700,000 people have received support with shelter and living space, such as tents, special “relief housing units”, repair toolkits and tarpaulins.
The UN has also supported the Ministry of Health with 4.6 million vaccine doses, mobile health clinics and medicines.
Displaced persons’ camps flooded in Syria
In Syria, where some 8.8 million people have been affected by the earthquake, heavy rainfall in the northwest is causing more hardship for displaced families, flooding camps and destroying thousands of tents. At least 50 displacement sites have been flooded.
The UN and partners have been providing emergency shelter, food, water, sanitation and hygiene items. OCHA reports that over a hundred schools in the heavily-affected governorates of Aleppo, Lattakia and Hama are still being used as collective shelters.
A fifth of food production lost
Meanwhile, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday that more than 20 per cent of Türkiye’s food production has been damaged by the earthquake, which impacted 11 key agricultural provinces.
The earthquake-affected region is known as Türkiye’s “fertile crescent” and accounts for almost 15 percent of the country’s agricultural income. More than one-third of the people in the impacted areas rely on agriculture for their livelihood and are now struggling to make ends meet.
Saving the next harvest
FAO has been providing cash assistance to farmers and helping them rehabilitate their farms. But crucial deadlines for securing future crops are looming, and the agency says fertilizer shortages will make it hard to sustain food production.
“The planting season deadline is approaching. We need to urgently support our farmers by providing fertilizers and seeds,” said FAO Subregional Coordinator for Central Asia and Representative in Türkiye, Viorel Gutu. “This is our only chance to maintain crop production levels this year.”
The agency stressed that support was urgently needed to “prevent a national food access and availability crisis” in Türkiye and mitigate “soaring” food prices.
Peter R. Breggin MD is a lifelong reformer known as “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his criticism of biological psychiatry and his promotion of more effective, empathic, and ethical forms of psychological, educational, and social approaches to people with emotional suffering and disability. He graduated from Harvard College with Honors and his psychiatric training included a Teaching Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Following his training, he became a Full Time Consultant in the U.S. Public Health Service at NIH, assigned to the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, he has taught at several universities, including Johns Hopkins, George Mason, and the University of Maryland, as well as at the Washington School of Psychiatry.
ECT works by damaging the brain. ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) involves the application of two electrodes to the head to pass electricity through the brain with the goal of causing an intense seizure or convulsion. The process always damages the brain, resulting each time in a temporary coma and often a flatlining of the brain waves, which is a sign of impending brain death.
After one, two or three ECTs, the trauma causes typical symptoms of severe head trauma or injury including headache, nausea, memory loss, disorientation, confusion, impaired judgment, loss of personality, and emotional instability. These harmful effects worsen and some become permanent as routine treatment progresses.
ECT originated in 1938. Modifications have been used since the 1960s and are not new or safer. These changes make it harder to cause a seizure. As a result, modern ECT requires even stronger and more damaging doses of electricity.
THE PURPOSE OF ECT IS TO CAUSE AN INTENSE SEIZURE OR CONVULSION. THE PROCESS ALWAYS DAMAGES THE BRAIN AND CAUSES MENTAL DYSFUNCTION.
ECT works by damaging the brain. The initial trauma can cause an artificial euphoria which ECT doctors mistakenly call an improvement. After several routine ECTs, the damaged person becomes increasingly apathetic, indifferent, unable to feel genuine emotions, and even robotic. Memory loss and confusion worsen. This helpless individual becomes unable to voice distress or complaints and becomes docile and manageable. ECT doctors mistakenly call this an improvement but it indicates severe and disabling brain injury.
ECT permanently impairs memory and causes other long-term signs of mental dysfunction such as difficulties with concentration and new learning. Memories of important past experiences are commonly impaired or eradicated, including weddings, birthdays, vacations, educational experiences, and housekeeping or professional skills. Sense of self or identity can be demolished, and family members often report that their loved one “was never the same again.” Follow-up studies show that ECT has been used to abuse women by making them docile and submissive.
Many animal studies show that clinical ECT causes small hemorrhages throughout the brain as well as patches of cell death. Newly discovered ECT induced neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) is not a benefit but instead confirms brain injury. Neurogenesis is a response to brain damage from many causes, including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
ECT is not a last resort because it does not work and can ruin recovery. ECT does not prevent suicide, but can cause it. Controlled clinical trials show that ECT has no more benefit than sham ECT (anesthesia with no shock).
ECT DOES NOT PREVENT SUICIDE, BUT CAN CAUSE ITPeter Breggin MD
ECT blunts emotional life during the acute phase of brain injury for about 4 weeks, after which the person remains depressed with the added affliction of brain damage. Abundant evidence indicates that ECT should be banned. Because ECT destroys the ability to protest, all ECT quickly becomes involuntary and thus inherently abusive and a human rights violation. Therefore, when ECT has already been started, concerned relatives or others should immediately intervene to stop it, if necessary with an attorney.
ECT DESTROYS THE ABILITY TO PROTEST. ALL ECT QUICKLY BECOMES INVOLUNTARY AND VIOLENTLY ABUSIVE.
In place of ECT, depressed and severely disturbed people need good individual, couples, or family therapy. Family members should participate actively in therapy with their overwhelmed loved ones.
Since psychiatric drugs commonly cause or worsen depression, anxiety and psychosis, always consider stopping all psychiatric drugs through a carefully supervised withdrawal.
Becoming free of psychiatric drugs is often the start of recovery. See Peter R. Breggin, MD, Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families (2013).
Key Points To Remember
ECT is not a last resort because it does not work and can ruin any hope of future recovery.
After one or more ECTs, the brain-damaged individual becomes too docile and confused to protest or resist. Therefore family members, concerned individuals, advocates, or attorneys must intervene to prevent more extensive injury. No harm will come from stopping shock treatment, but increasing harm will inevitably occur from increasing numbers of ECTs.
Because it always becomes involuntary and because it causes severe damage to the brain and mind, ECT should be banned.
How to Access Resources
The facts in this report are confirmed by more than 125 scientific articles and other relevant materials at Dr. Peter Breggin’s “ECT Resources Center” which is available free of charge online at www.ectresources.org.
A table of contents is provided with extensive search terms such as “memory loss” and “brain damage.” For Dr. Breggin’s medical textbook chapter on ECT see his book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, Second Edition, New York, Springer Publishing Company, 2008.
Permission is given to reprint and distribute this publication in hardcopy or digital form provided it is free and the copyright is included.
Electroshock – In February 2013, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Mr Juan Méndez, when speaking amongst other things, ECT (electroconvulsive therapy o electroshock) recommended an
“absolute ban on forced and non-consensual medical interventions against persons with disabilities, including the non-consensual administration of psychosurgery, electroshock and mind-altering drugs such as neuroleptics, [and] the use of restraint and solitary confinement, for both long- and short-term application.” [i]
REPORT OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL,INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT
1 February 2013
39. …Medical care that causes severe suffering for no justifiable reason can be considered cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if there is State involvement and specific intent, it is torture.
63. … It is essential that an absolute ban on all coercive and non-consensual measures, including restraint and solitary confinement of people with psychological or intellectual disabilities, should apply in all places of deprivation of liberty, including in psychiatric and social care institutions….
V. Conclusions and recommendations
Significance of categorizing abuses in health-care settings as torture and ill-treatment
82. The prohibition of torture is one of the few absolute and non-derogable human rights, a matter of jus cogens, a peremptory norm of customary international law. Examining abuses in health-care settings from a torture protection framework provides the opportunity to solidify an understanding of these violations and to highlight the positive obligations that States have to prevent, prosecute and redress such violations.
B. Recommendations
85. The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to:
Enforce the prohibition of torture in all health-care institutions, both public and private, by, inter alia, declaring that abuses committed in the context of health-care can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; regulating health-care practices with a view to preventing mistreatment under any pretext; and integrating the provisions of prevention of torture and ill-treatment into health-care policies;
4. Persons with psychosocial disabilities
89. The UN Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to:
Impose an absolute ban on all forced and non-consensual medical interventions against persons with disabilities, including the non-consensual administration of psychosurgery, electroshock and mind-altering drugs such as neuroleptics, the use of restraint and solitary confinement, for both long- and short-term application. The obligation to end forced psychiatric interventions based solely on grounds of disability is of immediate application and scarce financial resources cannot justify postponement of its implementation
“(d) Revise the legal provisions that allow detention on mental health grounds or in mental health facilities, and any coercive interventions or treatments in the mental health setting without the free and informed consent by the person concerned. Legislation authorizing the institutionalization of persons with disabilities on the grounds of their disability without their free and informed consent must be abolished.
14 May 2018: Statement by UN High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights, Mr Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
“Psychiatric institutions, like all closed settings, generate exclusion and segregation, and being forced into one amounts to arbitrary deprivation of liberty. They are also, often, the locus of abusive and coercive practices, as well as violence potentially amounting to torture.”
“Forced treatment – including forced medication and forced electroconvulsive treatment, as well as forced institutionalisation and segregation – should no longer be practiced.”
Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations (A/HRC/39/36) of 24 July 2018
Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
44. In light of the discussions, the following recommendations were proposed.
46. States should ensure that all health care and services, including all mental health care and services, are based on the free and informed consent of the individual concerned, and that legal provisions and policies permitting the use of coercion and forced interventions, including involuntary hospitalization and institutionalization, the use of restraints, psychosurgery, forced medication, and other forced measures aimed at correcting or fixing an actual or perceived impairment, including those allowing for consent or authorization by a third party, are repealed. States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and as amounting to discrimination against users of mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities. States should ensure their enjoyment and exercise of legal capacity on an equal basis with others by repealing laws that provided for substituted decision-making, and should provide: a range of voluntary supported decision-making mechanisms, including peer support, respectful of their individual autonomy, will and preferences; safeguards against abuse and undue influence within support arrangements; and the allocation of resources to enable and ensure the availability of support.
14 September 2018: Presentation of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights thematic report Mental Health and Human Rights by UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Kate Gilmore.
“PRACTICES SUCH AS FORCED TREATMENT, FORCED STERILIZATION AND FORCED INSTITUTIONALIZATION VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS, AS DOES THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THOSE WITH MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS.”
June 10, 2021: The World Health Organization’s “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centered and Rights-Based Approaches,”
The World Health Organization’s “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centered and Rights-Based Approaches,” condemns coercive psychiatric practices, which it says,
“are pervasive and are increasingly used in services in countries around the world, despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”[ii]
“Several other rights of the CRPD, including Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse, also prohibit coercive practices such as forced admission and treatment, seclusion and restraint, as well as the administering of antipsychotic medication, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and psychosurgery without informed consent.”[iii]
Consultation on ways to harmonize laws, at the United Nations (A/HRC/49/29) of 2 February 2022
Summary of the outcome of the consultation on ways to harmonize laws, policies and practices relating to mental health with the norms of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and on how to implement them
Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
“40. In the light of the discussions, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights makes the following observations and recommendations for States and all other relevant stakeholders, including health professionals, on ways to harmonize, as appropriate, laws, policies and practices relating to mental health with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and on how to implement them:
“(c) Stemming from their obligations under the Convention, States should repeal provisions on forced institutionalization and substituted decision-making in law and in practice. States’ commitment to deinstitutionalization should include ending involuntary treatment practices,”
DRAFT GUIDANCE ON MENTAL HEALTH, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LEGISLATION
June 2022
WHO/OHCHR
“Significant controversy surrounds the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and its associated risks (171). In Slovenia and Luxembourg, ECT is not available (172); and in many countries, there has been a dramatic decline in its use (173). Moreover, there are calls to consider banning ECT altogether (174, 175). If permitted, ECT must only be administered with the informed consent of the person concerned. International human rights standards are very clear that ECT without consent violates the right to physical and mental integrity and may constitute torture and ill-treatment (77). People being offered ECT should also be made aware of all its risks and potential short- and long-term harmful effects, such as memory loss and brain damage (176, 177).”
Box 24. What the law can say
WHERE ELECTROCONVULSIVE THERAPY CONTINUES TO BE PRACTICED, ITS ADMINISTRATION WITHOUT A PERSON’S PRIOR WRITTEN INFORMED CONSENT IS PROHIBITED.
171. Read J, Cunliffe S, Jauhar S, McLoughlin DM. Should we stop using electroconvulsive therapy? BMJ. 2019;364:k5233. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k5233.
172. Gazdag G, Takács R, Ungvari GS, Sienaert P. The practice of consenting to electroconvulsive therapy in the european union. J ECT. 2012;28:4-6. doi: 10.1097/YCT.0b013e318223c63c.
173. Read J, Harrop C, Geekie J, Renton J, Cunliffe S. A second independent audit of electroconvulsive therapy in england, 2019: Usage, demographics, consent, and adherence to guidelines and legislation. Psychol Psychother Theory Res Pract. 2021;94:603-19. doi: 10.1111/papt.12335.
174. Read J, Cunliffe S, Jauhar S, McLoughlin DM. Should we stop using electroconvulsive therapy? . BMJ. 2019;364:k5233. doi: 10.1136/bmj.k5233.
176. Sackeim H, Prudic J, Fuller R, al. e. The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in community settings. Neuropsychopharmacol. 2007;32:244–54. doi: 10.1038/sj.npp.1301180.
[i] “Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez,” UN Human Rights Council, 1 Feb.2013, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A.HRC.22.53_English.pdf
[ii] “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centered and Rights-Based Approaches,” World Health Organization, 10 June 2021, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240025707 (to download report)
[iii] “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centered and Rights-Based Approaches,” World Health Organization, 10 June 2021, p. 7.
“The wave of deadly violence sweeping through the occupied West Bank since the beginning of this year is the inexorable consequence of an acquisitive and repressive occupation with no end in sight, and the culture of lawlessness and impunity Israel has nurtured and enjoyed,” UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said in a statement.
Recent months have been marked by escalating unrest between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel’s new hardline government has also pledged to expand West Bank settlements and annex occupied territory.
She said Israeli violence – including the deadly raid in Jenin refugee camp on 26 January, in the old city of Nablus on 22 February, and in Jericho a week later – has left 80 Palestinians dead, and over 2,000 wounded, in less than 90 days.Thirteen Israelis also were killed by Palestinians during this period.
“Every loss of life, whether Palestinian or Israeli, is a tragic reminder of the price people pay for not addressing pervasive injustice and its root causes,” she said.
Repressive occupation, symbolic condemnation
The rights expert noted that over the past decades, the international community has witnessed record-high numbers of Palestinian deaths and injuries.
Meanwhile, Palestinians have also endured confinement, land confiscation, home demolitions, fragmentation, discriminatory law enforcement, mass incarceration and other countless abuses, indignities and humiliations.
“Israel, emboldened by a lack of meaningful intervention, has consolidated its acquisitive and repressive occupation, with Member States offering little more than symbolic condemnation, humanitarians providing band-aid aid, and legal scholars entangled in theoretical debates,” she said.
‘No equal parties’
Her statement urged the UN to “move beyond simply counting casualties and calling for restraint.”
The Organization “cannot indulge in the condescending acceptance of an irresolvable ‘conflict’ and the myth of conflicting narratives, and in urging the ‘parties’ to ‘de-escalate tensions’ and ‘resume negotiations,’” she said.
“In reality, there are no equal parties nor a proper ‘conflict,’ but rather an oppressive regime that threatens the right of an entire people to exist,” she insisted.
Furthermore, “tolerating annexation would legitimise aggression, bringing international law back almost a century: this is the reality the international community must stop immediately and reverse.”
Oppose annexation, support self-determination
Ms. Albanese urged the international community to recommit to the ideals of the UN Charter, in the interest of both Palestinians and Israelis.
“To maintain its credibility and purpose, the UN must acknowledge that conflicting narratives and historical facts must be resolved through the lens of legality and justice, and work effectively to oppose any forms of annexation of occupied territory, realise the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and terminate the apartheid regime Israel is enforcing upon them.,” she advised.
About Special Rapporteurs
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva.
These independent experts are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations.
They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
Mr. Türk’s warning comes amid the reported harassment and prosecution of justice officials involved with the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), including, most recently, former Commissioner Francisco Dall’Anese.
The UN rights chief called on the Guatemalan authorities “to ensure judges and lawyers can function freely and without fear of reprisals”. An independent judiciary is “vital” for a democratic society, he insisted.
The International Commission against Impunity was an independent body established by a UN-Guatemala agreement in 2007 to carry out corruption probes. Its work ceased in September 2019 when its mandate was not renewed amid attacks by then-President Jimmy Morales.
Mr. Türk also warned about potential violations of the right to participate in public affairs, as the candidacies of several presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the upcoming June elections were rejected by election authorities.
“I am also concerned that presidential and vice-presidential candidates from across the political spectrum, including Thelma Cabrera, Jordan Rodas and Roberto Arzú, have had their candidacies for the 25 June elections rejected by the Electoral Court on seemingly arbitrary grounds,” the High Commissioner said.
Thelma Cabrera was the only indigenous candidate running for president until the decision to disqualify her from the race. Appeals on all three cases are currently before the Supreme Court.
Judicial independence at risk
Mr. Türk stressed that “the right to participate in public affairs, including the right to vote and to stand for election, is an internationally recognized human right,” adding that judiciary authorities should “decide matters before them impartially, on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, without any restrictions or improper influence”.
Earlier this year, the UN rights chief sounded the alarm on similar reprisals in Guatemala, as the country’s Special Prosecutor’s Office against impunity announced arrest warrants against three justice officials, including a former CICIG staffer.
Volker Türk, High Commissionner for Human Rights addresses a biennial high-level panel on the death penalty.
Surge in harassment
When presenting his report on Guatemala to the Human Rights Council in March, Mr. Türk pointed out that between 2021 and 2022, his office had documented a more than 70 per cent increase in the number of justice officials facing intimidation and criminal charges in the country.
The harassment was related to the officials’ work on corruption or human rights violations, particularly those that occurred in the context of the civil war from 1960 to 1996. Some had left the country, fearing for their safety.
Guatemala’s human rights record was examined in January 2023 under the Universal Periodic Review. A significant number of recommendations made as part of that process, by other Member States, were related to the need to guarantee the independence of the judiciary, protect justice officials, and strengthen anti-corruption measures and the rule.
