The Validity Foundation has joined twelve other leading European organisations and networks of persons with disabilities to demand the urgent and immediate withdrawal of the draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention. Full joint statement below.
If adopted by the Council of Europe’s highest decision-making body, the Committee of Ministers, the Additional Protocol would be fundamentally incompatible with the letter, spirit and specific rights of persons with disabilities enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
By purporting to “regulate” involuntary psychiatric detention and forced treatment, the Additional Protocol would reduce human rights protections for persons with psychosocial disabilities, threatening to undermine and roll back two decades of progress since the adoption and near-universal ratification of the CRPD.
Validity is one of the leading organisations in Europe undertaking strategic litigation and advocacy to enhance and enforce the human rights of persons with disabilities, including before the European Court of Human Rights.
In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights declined to provide an advisory opinion on whether involuntary detention and treatment of persons with psychosocial disabilities were compatible with the Oviedo Convention on Bioethics. That request was widely understood as an attempt to secure legal and political support for the draft Additional Protocol in the face of intense opposition from the disability rights community. In declining the request, the Court took note of submissions by Validity and European organisations of persons with disabilities that the CRPD is the primary universal human rights treaty concerning persons with disabilities, including persons with psychosocial disabilities.
Commenting on the renewed push to adopt the Additional Protocol, Steven Allen, Executive Director of the Validity Foundation, said:
“We urge the Committee of Ministers to step back and withdraw this unacceptable draft Additional Protocol. It is a poorly drafted document that dilutes human rights protections, introduces conflicting ‘standards’, and fundamentally violates the dignity and autonomy of persons with psychosocial disabilities across Europe – with global implications that cannot be ignored.
“For more than 15 years, persons with disabilities, human rights experts and the United Nations have been clear that the Additional Protocol is fundamentally ill-considered and would set back progress. It has already consumed vast amounts of time and resources that should have been invested in expanding, rather than undermining, disability rights protections.
“Those calls have gone unheard. Persons with disabilities have once again been silenced and told what is ‘best’ for them — a return to paternalism that must be rejected in the strongest possible terms. It now rests with the Committee of Ministers to show leadership: withdraw the document, and ensure that the Council of Europe returns to its core mission of protecting and defending human rights in Europe.”
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the authoritative body of independent experts charged with overseeing implementation of the CRPD worldwide, released an open letter this week calling on the Council of Europe and its Member States to withdraw the draft Additional Protocol. The Committee warned that, by proceeding with the draft Protocol, the Council of Europe and its Member States would be “acting in breach of their international obligations under the UNCRPD”. It instead called on the Council of Europe to redirect its efforts “towards non-coercive, community-based and human rights-compliant approaches that end coercion in mental health and fully respect the dignity, autonomy, will and preferences of persons with disabilities.”
The Committee also underlined the relevance of the European Court of Human Rights’ 2024 judgment in Validity Foundation on behalf of T.J. v. Hungary (full judgment here), noting that the Court had concluded that violence, ill-treatment and torture are associated with involuntary placement and involuntary treatment. The judgment reinforces the urgent need for the Council of Europe to move away from legal frameworks that legitimise coercion, and towards rights-based, community-based alternatives.
The Rapporteur Group on Human Rights, a subsidiary body of the Committee of Ministers, is scheduled to meet on 7 July, when it may consider adoption of the draft Additional Protocol. Validity joins its partners in calling on the Rapporteur Group and the Committee of Ministers to withdraw this damaging proposal once and for all.
Joint Statement: Council of Europe must not legitimise coercion in psychiatry
Originally published by the European Disability Forum here.
13 disability and human rights organisations reiterate their strong opposition to the adoption of the draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention. This protocol would regulate involuntary placement and treatment in mental health settings, perpetuating coercive psychiatric practices on the basis of disability.
At a time when the Council of Europe has taken a positive step by adopting the Recommendation on respect for autonomy in mental healthcare, it is even clearer that the draft Additional Protocol points in the wrong direction.
The Recommendation confirms that autonomy, informed consent, and respect for individual will and preferences must be at the centre of mental healthcare. It strengthens, rather than weakens, the case for withdrawing the draft Additional Protocol. Endorsement of the Recommendation by the Forum and other disability organisations and partners cannot be read as legitimising the draft Protocol. It is, on the contrary, a clear call to abandon the draft Protocol and focus political and institutional efforts on implementing the Recommendation in a way that is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Therefore, the European Disability Forum and partners call on the Council of Europe and its Member States to align their work with the human rights standards already reflected in the Recommendation and to definitively abandon the draft Additional Protocol.
We welcome the support for our call by other human rights bodies, including the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI), which adopted a statement in May 2026 raising serious concerns about the draft Additional Protocol. We also welcome the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ latest call for the withdrawal of the draft Additional Protocol, published on 1 July 2026.
The Council of Europe should now do what its own Recommendation suggests: ensure respect for autonomy in mental healthcare with the ultimate goal of eliminating the use of coercion. The draft Additional Protocol would increase the use of coercive measures, fails to respect and foster individual autonomy, and should therefore be definitively withdrawn.
Endorsements
- European Disability Forum
- Mental Health Europe
- European Network of (Ex)-Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
- European Network on Independent Living
- Autism-Europe
- Inclusion Europe
- Disabled Peoples’ International – Europe
- European Down Syndrome Association
- Comité Español de Representantes de Personas con Discapacidad
- European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities
- Society of Social Psychiatry P. Sakellaropoulos
- Validity Foundation
- Disability Rights International