CRPD Committee on Azerbaijan and Costa Rica

Today I woke up in the house in Ballens again, and around 9 AM we loaded our luggage into the car. Tonight we are sleeping in Geneva. After a 45 minute drive we arrived in Geneva at Palais Wilson, to join the sessions of the CRPD Committee. In the morning the review on Azerbaijan (part 2) took place and in the afternoon the first session on Costa Rica was held.

At 10 AM the session on Azerbaijan began. The government delegation started by answering the questions that were raised yesterday. The first issue that was addressed was about guardianship regimes, and the government explained the details of the procedures with criteria and court decisions etc. There was quite some outdated language in the presentation and I was actually shocked to hear the delegation say “we have an advanced system which protects people, we see no problem, we don’t think it needs to change”. Somehow the tone of the conversation seemed to have changed. In my experience, yesterday the government delegation showed more willingness and awareness that change was needed. It was also quite obvious that the delegation made efforts to use the correct language and concepts, but unfortunately they didn’t really succeed. For example “the subsidy for disabled persons was not given to the person with the disability as a gift of pity; it was given to the family to provide support” (which doesn’t really correspond with the principle of autonomy). That remark didn’t create a better image. While the government yesterday admitted that there was still a long way to go, today they plead many times that the mentioned worrying situations (CPT report) had improved very much, and that in regard of various services all persons with disabilities had “unrestricted access”. Also the government said “indigenous minorities were respected and not discriminated against, they were living in the most beautiful parts of the countries, these were like ‘paradises’… ”. Unfortunately we had heard the NGOs saying different things. It was rather interesting to hear the delegation trying to get it right, while struggling with the language. They were trying it very hard, which in itself is surely a positive thing, because in essence it means that there is a wish to comply to the human rights standards. It was an interesting session, and soon the CRPD Committee will come with it’s Concluding Observations on Azerbaijan. It is an interesting process to witness.

Then at lunchtime there was an NGO meeting on Costa Rica. I know someone who comes from Costa Rica, and she has experienced psychiatric institutionalization in Costa Rica, so I was very interested in this session, because I hoped the CRPD Committee would address concerns about the human rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, because I hade heard terrible stories. I had asked my contact to give me information on the worst things (human rights violations) that she knew of, and she managed to provide me with that painful information later on the day.

At the NGO-session on Costa Rica, we heard about forced sterilization of women on a really large scale, and a lot of horrible laws and law reforms which go against the CRPD, such as on biomedical research for which someone else can give consent (very shocking), the inaccessible and exclusive voting process (elections are on Sunday), not meaningful participation in policy making and ineffective weak monitoring bodies. The list seemed endless.

After the NGO session the government delegation was supposed to come in for the CRPD review session, but there were no ministerial representatives from Costa Rica, only the ambassador and several staff members. That was quite a bad signal in terms of taking the CRPD serious. The delegation of Costa Rica told a nice story about how they were amongst the first countries to ratify the CRPD. They spoke about how there were all types of fine policies in place, and that they just had established a forensic psychiatric detention centre (oh no!). They tried to make it sound good, but in fact it was not in line with the CRPD. It wasn’t good, but again, at least they tried to make it sound good, so somehow there is an intent to comply, to state it positive.

The CRPD Committee then raised many questions on many themes, such as the terminology and the legal frameworks, and the committee expressed concerns on the situation of women and children with disabilities, the lack of attention for cross-cutting issues (double-discrimination), violence, torture and ill-treatment in institutions (documented in various reports), inaccessible support for victims and inaccessible shelters, lack of access to justice, no independent monitoring, no focal point, exclusion of persons with disabilities in policies on domestic violence and so on. And of course they asked the delegation on information on their plans to abolish forced sterilization, on plans to amend the law that allows biomedical research and experimentation on the basis of another person’s consent, and the shift from guardianship regimes to assistance in decision-making, and to describe the measures taken to ensure fully accessible election for all persons with disabilities in Costa Rica. It was really a load of questions. Tomorrow the government will answer.

The sessions ended around 18:00, and then Hege, Tina and I went to the apartment where we had also stayed together 2 weeks ago during the meetings of the Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee. It is the apartment of the parents of the friend of an international colleague of WNUSP. We were all quite tired and hungry, so after a nice cup of tea we went to eat Chinese in a restaurant not far from here. When we came “home” we had some more social talks, and then I went to my room to do some work.

Earlier this evening I received the information on the situation in psychiatric institutions in Costa Rica, and I forwarded it to several Committee members. It is very worrying, and I hope questions will be raised to the government. I have also sent the webcast link to the person concerned. (http://www.treatybodywebcast.org/treaty-body-webcast-ii/ ) I can imagine how she feels, and how she also loves to see this suffering end. I get happy by the thought that I am not powerless, and she isn’t powerless as well. We have a voice, and it can make a difference in the lives of people who are suffering from forced psychiatry. The situation in psychiatric institutions in Costa Rica is worrying from what I know, so I hope that this will be addressed tomorrow.

And now it’s again really late at night, but I wanted to write my blog and my laptop is very slow, which is decreasing my sleeping time. It’s time for a new laptop, next week. For now: it still works (with some freezes and rejections and delay and so on). Anyway, tomorrow I have to get up early again, so I’m off to bed again.