HRW is an international group which investigates human rights issues worldwide and reports on them. HRW pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights globally.
The visit this month will be focusing on institutions, including psychiatric hospitals and care homes with a United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities perspective. The UNCRPD is an international treaty that aims to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. HRW are hoping to interview people with recent experience of detention to gather evidence.
The team will have a focus on people with mental health issues and learning disabilities as HRW has become aware of reported levels of neglect and abuse (among detained patients) high death rates have been exposed by the UK press and by disability charities in recent months.
The visit comes just a month after Deaf and Disabled people’s organisations (DDPOs) from across the UK descended on the UN building in Geneva to give evidence on the state of Disabled people's human rights in the UK, where amongst other evidence of discrimination, passionate voices spoke of people with learning disabilities still being placed in mental health units.
Visiting London on Oct 17th and 18th, the HRW team will then move onto Manchester on October 19th and 20th and hope to visit people in other parts of England, too, before returning home on 27th October.
Dorothy Gould of Liberation Rights said: “This is a brilliant opportunity to make public the governments continuing failure to end involuntary detention and forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals, the sheer level of abuse that is happening in them and major issues In care homes too.”
If you are affected by the issues to be addressed by the HRW, please contact Dorothy Gould by Friday October 6th so that she can pass them on to the HRW team. Dorothy’s email address is liberationrights@gmail.com.