political participation

19 December 2011. On Saturday the Venice Commission (an influential group of constitutional law experts) amended one of its key documents. In doing so it reversed an anomaly which allowed countries to exclude people with “genuine mental disabilities” from the ballot box.

17 November 2011. MDAC congratulates Europe’s top political body which today adopted new standards which advance the right to political participation of people with disabilities.

20 October 2011, Cape Town, South Africa. This week, MDAC was in Cape Town, South Africa, to participate in a congress of Pan African Network of People with Psycho-Social Disabilities. At the congress, MDAC gave a presentation on the right to vote under international law. The presentation highlighted recent developments such as the European Court of Human Rights judgment in Kiss v. Hungary, and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concluding observations with regard to Spain.

23 September 2011. Human rights organisations are calling on the Hungarian government to consult civil society in relation to the effective implementation of the recommendations formulated by the UN Human Rights Council during Hungary’s Universal Periodic Review.

23 March, 2011. Yesterday, Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “Persons with disabilities must not be denied the right to vote”.

The Mental Disability Advocacy Center attended the Fourth meeting of the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on Participation of People with Disabilities in Political and Public Life (CAHPAH-PPL) in Strasbourg, 8-10 November 2010.

CAHPAH is the European Co-ordination Forum for the Council of Europe Disability Action Plan 2006-2015. You can read the Action Plan here.

• Providing supported decision-making for the approximately 80,000 people under guardianship;

Budapest (Hungary) and Strasbourg (France), 20 May 2010. Persons with disabilities placed under guardianship are one of the most vulnerable groups of Hungarian society. One reason for their exclusion is that they are automatically deprived of their basic right to participate in political decision-making. Today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this blanket disenfranchisement is contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights.