An insight in Croatian institutions

People with disabilities should be included in the society and not live in big institutions. In Croatia, there are still many people with disabilities who live in institutions. There was a research about their lives and experiences in these institutions. Based on this research, there is a report which shows that living in institutions is against the rights of people with disabilities. This report also suggests the Croatian government ways to protect the rights of people with disabilities.

MDAC has now launched a report about the lives and experiences of people with disabilities who live in institutions in Croatia. Except for an insight in the Croatian reality, the report also offers various recommendations to the Croatian government in order to protect the rights of people with disabilities.

“Croatia has a population of nearly 4.5 million people,1 yet it is estimated that over 10,000 people with disabilities live their lives segregated from society and isolated from public view.2 They live “Out of Sight”, in psychiatric and social care institutions often located in remote places. Little is known about what happens inside these institutions. There is no effective human rights monitoring system. As a result, the people who are in such institutions are at significant risk of exploitation and violence and other abuses of their fundamental rights. Moreover, they have little opportunity to complain or to seek redress.”

In June 2010, Mental Disability Advocacy Centre (MDAC) and Association for Social Affirmation of People with Mental Disabilities (Shine) realized monitoring visits to selected psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions in Croatia. They have now presented their findings in a report in an attempt to shed light on the daily lives and experiences of people living in these institutions either temporarily or permanently, and raise awareness of their routine violations of their rights.

Entitled “Out of sight. Human Rights in Psychiatric Hospitals and Social Care Institutions in Croatia”, the report provides a detailed insight in the current reality for people with disabilities in Croatian institutions, with respect to the issues and practice of admission and discharge, guardianship, material conditions, regimes and activities, staff, treatment and measures of restraint. At the same time, it underlines the obvious weakness of the current legislation to protect the rights of people with disabilities developing detailed recommendations for the Croatian government and all those who are involved in protecting and implementing the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people with disabilities.

More precisely, the report recommends that “there are 6 key objectives to which government reforms should be directed:

• Deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities and provision of appropriate community-based support services;

• Ensuring that the People’s Ombudsman has adequate financial and human resources necessary to monitor places of detention - including psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions - as obliged by its designation as the National Preventative Mechanism (NPM under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture;

• Designating or establishing a framework, including one or more independent mechanisms to promote and protect rights and monitor implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as obliged by Article 33(2) of the CRPD.

• Reforming the legal capacity system to abolish guardianship or other protective measures that equate to substituted decision-making and implementing models of supported decision-making;

• Ensuring that human rights of people with disabilities are respected, protected and fulfilled for people in psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions;

• Ensuring that people with disabilities and their representative organisations are involved in developing law and policy reform that relates to persons with disabilities and that mechanisms are created to ensure their active participation in implementation and monitoring of the CRPD.”

The report is available here.