Publication Date
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a watershed in the human rights of users and survivors of psychiatry. This course is offered with an emphasis on how users and survivors of psychiatry can use the CRPD to advance human rights of persons with disabilities.
The Convention of course guarantees the rights of all persons with disabilities, in all their diversity. Major constituencies organized at the international level included the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, World Federation of the Deaf, World Blind Union, World Federation of the Deafblind, Inclusion International (persons with intellectual disabilities and their families), International Federation of Hard of Hearing Persons, and Disabled Peoples’ International (cross-disability). They organized all disabled people’s organizations and allies into the International Disability Caucus, and aimed for the Convention to be equally relevant to all persons with disabilities irrespective of the type of disability or geographical location. Every constituency finds what it needs in the text, and the Convention can be approached from a number of different starting points to uncover its potential.
The course is taught by Tina Minkowitz, Esq., a human rights lawyer and survivor of psychiatry who was instrumental in developing the relevant provisions. She represented the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP) in the drafting and negotiation of the CRPD, and subsequently founded the Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP).
