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The human rights session at the Global Summit of the Movement for Global Mental Health was organized by Robert van Voren, Chief Executive of the Global Initiative on Psychiatry. The goal of the session was to focus on human rights issues and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and a particular effort was made to provide a forum to consumers of mental health services to voice their opinions.

The key note address was delivered by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Anand Grover, a well-known Indian lawyer with a long track record in defending the rights of persons with HIV/AIDS. In his presentation he gave an overview of international conventions and declarations guaranteeing the right to health to all, and ended his presentation with a special focus on the CRPD. See here for more

The panel sessions was chaired by Clemens Huitink, board member of Global Initiative on psychiatry and foreign policy advisor to the Dutch mental health umbrella organization GGZ-Nederland. He chaired a panel with a diverse group of mainly mental health consumers, from various countries and continents:

Giedrus Sadzevicius, who focused on a consumer perspective from Lithuania, a country which is struggling to bring their mental health systems more in line with the European standards, thus developing mechanisms on consumer participation;

Sylvester Katontoka from Zambia, who discussed his views on the CRPD and its potential impact on the position of mental health on the agenda in Africa;

Leonardos Skordos and Menelaos Theodoroulakis, user representatives from Greece who focused in their presentation on the European Commission’s influence on the process of reform of the mental health care system during the recent crisis;

Susan Catharine Keter from Kenya who gave us her personal experience as a lawyer of a mental heath consumer organization in Kenya and as a care giver.

Further presentations were delivered by Ursula Read from England with an anthropological perspective on human rights, and Dovile Juodkaite, director of the GIP Vilnius office and a lawyer by profession, who focused on the CRPD.

The session was well attended and positively received by the audience. Due to lack of time a round table discussion had to be cancelled.

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