Gábor is MDAC’s Senior Advocacy Officer. A former theoretical physicist and survivor of psychiatry, he has become a world-renowned advocate for the rights of persons with psycho-social disabilities. For more than a decade, he has chaired Hungary’s only network of user organisations (Hungarian Mental Health Interest Forum), chaired the European Network of (ex-)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, and worked with numerous disability rights organisations as a consultant. Gabor was profiled in the project Speak Truth to Power as one of the 51 select leading human rights defenders around the globe. He is a Fellow of Ashoka: the Global Association of Leading Social Entrepreneurs.
At MDAC Gábor is leading our intergovernmental and national level advocacy. In this role he has extensively advised intergovernmental bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations on disability rights issues and has participated in the work of the UN Ad Hoc Committee which drafted the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2008 Gábor spent six months working in India, where he worked to promote self-advocacy and grassroots involvement in the implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities across the country and across various sectors. Gábor was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in recognition of his work in the field of human rights of persons with disabilities in December 2009.
