• Greece: Olympic Host Failing on Disabilities
    Jun 27, 2011
    Greece should take action to improve the rights of people with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. Greece is the host of the Special Olympics summer games, the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, being held from June 25 through July 4, 2011.
  • Uganda: Languishing Behind Bars
    Apr 28, 2011
    The Ugandan justice minister should immediately issue orders to release 11 prisoners with psychosocial or mental disabilities who have languished in prison for years without resolution of their cases, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the minister. All 11 have been found not guilty by reason of insanity but returned by the courts to prison, where they are placed on "minister's orders" status indefinitely until the minister decides on a course of action.
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Reports

Mental Health

  • UN: Report Is Milestone for Reproductive Health
    Oct 25, 2011

    Human Rights Watch joined other human rights groups and health groups in issuing the following statement today following the release of a report about reproductive health by Anand Grover, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health. 

  • Keeping Health Systems Accountable: A Critical Component of the Every Woman, Every Child Campaign
    Oct 20, 2011

    Abeba M., an Ethiopian refugee living in Port Elizabeth, a small coastal town of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province, developed severe high blood pressure during her pregnancy. She went to a district hospital for treatment of this dangerous condition, but left because “the nurses and doctors did not treat me well,” she told me. She had to return when her condition worsened, though, and was admitted. Instead of getting the help she needed, she experienced treatment delays, abuse, and negligence.

  • Greece: Olympic Host Failing on Disabilities
    Jun 27, 2011
    Greece should take action to improve the rights of people with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. Greece is the host of the Special Olympics summer games, the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, being held from June 25 through July 4, 2011.
  • Uganda: Languishing Behind Bars
    Apr 28, 2011
    The Ugandan justice minister should immediately issue orders to release 11 prisoners with psychosocial or mental disabilities who have languished in prison for years without resolution of their cases, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the minister. All 11 have been found not guilty by reason of insanity but returned by the courts to prison, where they are placed on "minister's orders" status indefinitely until the minister decides on a course of action.
  • Letter to Ugandan Minister of Justice on the Indefinite Detention of Prisoners with Psychosocial Disabilities
    Apr 28, 2011
  • Croatia: Locked Up, Limited Lives
    Sep 23, 2010
    Thousands of people in Croatia with intellectual or mental disabilities are forced to live in institutions that strip them of their privacy, autonomy, and dignity.
  • US: The Failure to Provide Fair Removal Hearings to Persons with Mental Disabilities
    Sep 3, 2010
  • US: Suit Seeks Deportation Safeguards
    Aug 3, 2010
    A lawsuit filed on August 2, 2010, underscores the need for the federal government to provide lawyers and additional safeguards to people with mental disabilities in immigration courts
  • Letter to the Pennsylvania Appellate Court and Criminal Procedural Rules Committees
    Jun 22, 2010
    Human Rights Watch submits this comment to the proposed recommendations from the Committee for additions and amendments to the Rules of Criminal Procedure (RCP) relating to the competence of persons to be executed, which in our view are not consistent with international rights and protections guaranteed to persons in prison and persons with disabilities. Specifically, the proposed provisions insufficiently protect defendants from forced medical or psychiatric treatment without their consent and raise serious questions of medical ethics for medical and mental health personnel who may be subject to an order of the court to administer treatment without consent.
  • Bringing Schools Up to the Standards of Prisons
    Apr 26, 2010
    Over two hundred thousand kids are punished in US schools each year by being paddled. One in five of them has a disability. No child should be paddled in school but it is hard to imagine anything more outrageous than paddling or hitting children because of their disability.
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