MDAC welcomes election of Nils Muižnieks as European human rights chief

27 January 2012, Budapest. MDAC welcomes the election of Nils Muižnieks as the third Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights. At their plenary session in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe elected Mr Muižnieks for a non-renewable term of six years starting on 1 April 2012. Mr Muižnieks is a member of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance and became its chair in January 2010. He is also the Director of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Latvia.

MDAC hopes that Commissioner Muižnieks will follow the lead of Thomas Hammarberg, the present Commissioner, regarding the rights of people with psycho-social disabilities and people with intellectual disabilities. Commissioner Hammarberg issued a paper in 2008 on equal rights for people with disabilities. In 2009 he spoke about the rights of people with intellectual disabilities and about the right to legal capacity. In 2010 he published a viewpoint on the need to monitor institutions to prevent ill-treatment. Commissioner Hammarberg has been particularly influential in Bulgaria, where he participated in a roundtable event in 2009, advocating for the rights of children with disabilities. Most recently, in March 2011, he stated that people with disabilities should face no restrictions to their right to vote.

Commissioner Muižnieks should continue these efforts. In particular, MDAC recommends that he:

1. Includes the rights of people with disabilities as a regular item in every mission to Member States and any resultant reports;
2. Vigorously challenges the wide-scale segregation and isolation of people with disabilities in institutions;  
3. Encourage States to enact legislation providing everyone with legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all areas of life, and ensuring that supports are made available for people who need such assistance;
4. Shines a light on the vulnerability of people in various places of detention, and views disability as a cross-cutting issue (like age, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation and so on);  
5. Highlights the barriers to accessing justice (including at the European Court of Human Rights), which people with disabilities face as victims of exploitation, abuse and other human rights violations, and in order to achieve the above -
6. Ensures that a full-time staff person is assigned to the disability rights portfolio.