20 November 2009. On today's 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) urges governments not to cut back on human rights-compliant services for children with disabilities.

Some governments are using the global economic crisis as a justification to decrease their social services and education budgets. As children with disabilities are often among the most vulnerable people in every country, MDAC encourages governments to allocate the maximum available resources to them. The concept of progressively realising economic, social and cultural rights means that governments cannot backslide, but rather that there must be measurable progress year on year.

11 November 2009. It is twenty years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the collapse of socialist systems in Europe. The first case heard by the European Court of Human Rights since this anniversary deals with a situation which has changed little in the past twenty years: the segregation of hundreds of thousands of people labelled with intellectual disabilities, mental health problems and other types of disabilities.

The two cases which were argued before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg yesterday - Mitev v. Bulgaria and Stanev v. Bulgaria - were both brought jointly by the nongovernmental organisations Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the Mental Disability Advocacy Center. Mr Mitev died in a social care institution last year and his case was continued by his sister. My Stanev attended the Court hearing in person, becoming the first person from a social care institution to bring his case before Europe's human rights court.

3 November 2009, Sofia, Bulgaria and Budapest, Hungary. It is one year since Europe’s highest social rights body found that Bulgaria had violated international law by discriminating against children with disabilities in not providing them with an education. A report issued today by the Mental Disability Advocacy Center and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee analyses progress one year later. Out of eleven recommendations flowing from the judicial decision, the Bulgarian government has achieved none fully, has achieved four partially, and has failed to achieve seven.

In Bulgaria’s capital today, sixty experts – including the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights – gather to ask one question: why has such little progress been made?