On 9 May 2025, Validity made a written submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in response to the Call for inputs: Global Trends and Developments on Torture. United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
The aim of our submission is to provide the Special Rapporteur with inputs on preventing torture and ill-treatment of persons with disabilities and deprivation of liberty in institutions, including group homes. Our submission will inform the Special Rapporteur’s forthcoming report to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly scheduled to be presented in October 2025.
We highlighted in the submission that persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities continue to be placed in mental referral institutions where there has been documented extreme abuses, including seclusion in dark rooms without toilets, clothing, or sensory interaction as seen in the case of Benon Kabale v Attorney General of Uganda, a case Validity is currently litigating addressing torture and other cruel, inhuman degrading treatment. In 2023, Benon shared his experiences of torture and ill-treatment at the Butabika referral mental hospital in Kampala in a video message.
We explained that in Europe, too, persons with psychosocial disabilities continue to be placed in psychiatric institutions including psychiatric hospitals, where grave human rights violations, including torture and ill-treatment, continue to happen. In 2024, in the case of V.I. v. The Republic of Moldova, where Validity represented the applicant, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment on account of applicant’s involuntary placement in a psychiatric hospital and psychiatric treatment. In the case of Validity Foundation on behalf of T.J. v. Hungary, which concerned the death of a person with disabilities in a social care home, the Court found that the respondent State failed to demonstrate the existence of a requisite standard of protection to prevent the deterioration of T.J.’s health and her untimely death while domestic authorities were fully aware of prevailing conditions of neglect and abandon in the social care home as well as the particular risk the deceased faced. The Court also found that the living conditions, medical and therapeutic care were inadequate and there was an excessive use of means of restraint.
We have brought to the attention of the Special Rapporteur that there is a worrying trend in Europe to name mini-institutions for example, ‘group homes’ and ‘family-type homes for children’ where acts of torture continue to be perpetrated to children and adults with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities (see for example our Bulgarian monitoring report), yet these institutions are wrongly categorised as ‘community-based services’.
We also reminded the Special Rapporteur that recently, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, in its General comment No. 1, adequately covered the full range of disability-specific forms of deprivation of liberty and concretely covered all disability-specific places of detention, including social care institutions, psychiatric institutions, group homes, and forensic psychiatric settings.
We pointed out in the submission that States must commit themselves, in accordance with their international obligations, to provide redress and reparations to persons with disabilities for their institutionalisation and its consequential harm.
Finally, we called upon the Special Rapporteur (1) to give urgent and focused attention to the persistent use of seclusion, restraints, and institutionalisation of persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities and recognise these practices as torture and ill-treatment under international law; and (2) to call for immediate redress and reparations to persons with disabilities detained in institutions and survivors of institutionalisation.
In addition to the UN Special Rapporteur, the submission has also been shared with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Africa (CPTA) within the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), in an effort to ensure coordinated attention to these urgent human rights concerns across global and regional mechanisms.