Disability, torture and ill-treatment: taking stock and ending abuses

Abstract

This paper sets out how torture prevention mechanisms have focused on prisons and police stations to the detriment of people in psychiatric and social care institutions, leaving people with disabilities exposed to torture and ill-treatment carried out with impunity. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) sets out human rights norms for people with disabilities and provides a timely opportunity for monitoring bodies to review their standards and practices. The CRPD calls for an end to disability-based detention, it establishes a state obligation to provide a range of community-based services instead of segregating people in institutions, and it clarifies that ever person with a disability has legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all areas of life, and that they should have access to support to exercise it. In introducing the five substantive articles in this special edition, this introductory paper contends that segregation and suffering of people with disabilities will continue as long as monitoring bodies ignore disability-specific detention facilities. The paper recommends torture prevention bodies to recognise the range of human rights violations affecting people with disabilities deprived of their liberty, visit disability-specific places of detention, apply CRPD standards in their work, and embrace monitors with disabilities as a core part of their practice.