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Summary: The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Bulgaria to close its children's institutions, including for children with disabilities, and instead provide alternative care.
[15 August 2011] - The Mental Disability Advocacy Center applauds hard-hitting conclusions of the UN Human Rights Committee, which has rejected the Bulgarian government's feeble plan to phase out children's institutions - including those for children with disabilities - over the next fifteen years. Instead, the Committee demanded that the Bulgarian government takes urgent action to close all children's institutions and create alternatives for care. The UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) is the monitoring body of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It has recently issued its concluding observations from its review of Bulgaria. These recommendations were influenced in part by a parallel report written by MDAC and partner organisation the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. In its concluding observations, the HRC makes detailed recommendations aimed at ensuring that Bulgaria better respects, protects and fulfils the rights of adults and children with psycho-social disabilities and intellectual disabilities. The HRC makes specific recommendations concerning psychiatric detention, the right to legal capacity as well as freedom from torture and ill-treatment against people with disabilities. MDAC has produced an analysis of the HRC's recommendations. MDAC's Executive Director Oliver Lewis stated, "We applaud the advances which the HRC has made in its own jurisprudence by, for example, looking at the rights of children with disabilities in a holistic way, and by exploring the links between deprivation of legal capacity and deprivation of liberty. We call on the Bulgarian government to take steps to implement the Committee's recommendations and ensure the participation of people with disabilities and their organisations in the process." Further Information:
pdf: http://mdac.info/node/749