Welcome to the new website of Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI). If you are not familiar with the work of our organization, I encourage you to take a look at some of our recent country reports, photographs, and video clips posted on this website. In our press section, you will see examples of the worldwide coverage of our findings that has brought unprecedented international attention to the concerns of this long-overlooked population. What you see you may find shocking – and you will certainly find disturbing. Over the last 15 years, MDRI has investigated the living conditions and treatment of people with mental disabilities in dozens of countries in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. Sad to say, we have found serious human rights violations across the globe.

Our most recent report, Torment not Treatment: Serbia’s segregation and abuse of children and adults with disabilities (November 2007) documents the practice of leaving children tied down to cribs. We have found adults with disabilities left to languish in cribs for years at a time. Our report from Argentina, Ruined Lives, documents large numbers of deaths in institutions and horrendous conditions in dark, barren isolation cells where people were held naked subject to near total sensory deprivation for months at a time. You will find similar findings from our reports on Romania, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay.

Despite these very upsetting findings, we are filled with hope. Wherever MDRI has worked, we have found courageous and inspiring local activists who are working within their own country to bring about change. MDRI has trained and supported those activists, and we are collaborating with them to bring about an end to abuses. We are particularly proud of our partnerships in Turkey, Argentina, and Kosovo (see “partners” section of our website detailing the work of these organizations). In Turkey, our collaboration brought a quick end to the practice of subjecting thousands of people each year to painful and dangerous electroshock treatment without any form of anesthesia. In Argentina, our partners are bringing legal challenges to arbitrary detention in psychiatric facilities. We have also helped people with psychiatric disabilities establish their own advocacy group. In Kosovo, we have helped people with intellectual disabilities form support and advocacy groups and they are now challenging government policies that segregate people from society. After years of pressure by MDRI and our Kosovar counterparts, the President of Kosovo has promised to work with us to close the country’s only institution and create programs to provide opportunities for full community integration and participation by people with disabilities.

As MDRI focuses on bringing about change in a few target countries, we are also working to bring about global changes. For years we worked with the United Nations to draft a new United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and this treaty will take effect for the first time in May 2008. This new addition to international human rights law sets a new universal benchmark – that people with disabilities everywhere have a right to choices about their lives and full integration into society. As we work abroad to hold governments accountable to human rights law, we are now working within the United States to demand ratification of this convention so that this country can be held to the same standard as all other countries.

We need your support to end abuses and fulfill the promise of the CRPD. MDRI depends entirely on private donations to make our work possible. The challenges are enormous, but we have shown that we can make an enormous difference in peoples’ lives. Please join us.

Warmest regards,

Eric Rosenthal
Executive Director