Validity Foundation - Mental Disability Advocacy Centre

Category: I’m A Person

Under this campaign, we call for recognition of equal citizenship of people with mental disabilities, including their right to make decisions about their own lives. Too often, people with mental disabilities are labelled as “incompetent” or are denied the right to decide by punitive guardianship systems. They may be denied the right to vote, to marry, to manage their own money, and even to decide where to live. Instead of systems based on restriction and control, we push governments to provide support to people to make their own decision – so that they can be the authors of their own lives.

Duped, detained and drugged

Today, the European Court of Human Rights found that 55-year-old Jaroslav Červenka from the Czech Republic was deceived and wrongfully held in a social care institution for eight months (judgment here). Validity (formerly MDAC) calls on the Government to prohibit disability-based incarceration, and to evacuate the more… Read More

Polish Constitutional Court says stop segregating people with disabilities

The Polish Constitutional Court has ruled that laws allowing guardians to detain people in social care institutions without court’s supervision are unconstitutional. This landmark judgment should change the law for an estimated 12,500 people under guardianship living in institutions. In 2002, Mr Stanislaw Kędzior’s brother was his guardian and sent… Read More

Dublin Four Courts, Ireland

Ireland: Legal Capacity in Ireland

Validity (formerly MDAC) has returned from a mission to Ireland. On 29 November 2011, Oliver Lewis, Validity’s Executive Director, with colleagues from Amnesty International Ireland, met with the Chair and Vice Chair of the Justice Committee of the Dáil Éireann (the House of Representatives, the lower chamber in the Irish… Read More