Recordings Ending psychiatric coercion – urgent need for effective remedies and reparations

Recordings

Conference Ending psychiatric coercion – urgent need for effective remedies and reparations

Oslo, 10 September 2024

Opening statement from the Human Rights Foundation ReDo

Hege Orefellen, Chair of the Human Rights Foundation ReDo

On behalf of the Human Rights Foundation ReDo and the user and survivor organization We Shall Overcome, I welcome you to this conference on “Ending psychiatric coercion – urgent need for effective remedies and reparations”.

A warm welcome to everyone here in the audience and to the even bigger audience that is with us online. And a special welcome to everyone that will contribute to the program today. We are grateful to have all of you amazing international experts and forefront human rights defenders, from all over the world, as speakers.

The human rights foundation ReDo is quite new, and this is our second conference and human rights award ceremony. ReDo was established in 2021 by Bjørg Njaa who left her whole inheritance to the aim of the foundation, which is to work against infringements, abuse, and coercion in the mental health system and to strengthen the human rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  Our work is centred on documentation of human rights violations in the mental health system and support for strategic litigation.

ReDo organizes an annual conference where an award is given in memory of Bjørg Njaa’s son; “The Ketil Njaa Solberg’s human rights award for battle against infringements, abuse and coercion in mental health.” Bjørg lost her son when he was only 25 years old, and the experiences with the mental health system, including the use of coercion, that lead up to his tragic death, was the start of a life-long battle for the mother. She spent the rest of her life fighting against coercion and abuse and for human rights and dignity.

We think that she would be honoured to see all of us here today. We are proud to arrange this year’s award as an international conference, and we are proud that this conference is organized by survivors of forced psychiatry, with survivors, and with the human rights agenda of survivors. Our main goal has always been to end psychiatric coercion and for the victims to be provided reparations for the harm done.

We start up this conference well aware of the barriers and challenges in front of us. The legislative barriers, laws still authorizing forced psychiatric interventions, procedural and other barriers for access to justice and even access to courts, lack of effective remedies and reparations, national courts and regional human rights bodies struggling to align with the CRPD, ableism, prejudice, discrimination, and a lack of understanding of the severe harms caused, and many more.

But we also start up this conference with hope, knowing that the world is about to change, and that the day will come when we no longer need to fear being locked up in psychiatric institutions and forcible drugged and electroshocked. The paradigm shift of the CRPD has already changed mindsets, laws and practices around the world. The discrimination and the harms have been acknowledged in numerous UN reports and guidelines and calls to end psychiatric coercion have come from several UN monitoring bodies, as well as the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and Human Rights Commissioner. We will hear more about human rights standards requiring an end to psychiatric coercion, and reparations, promising legal reforms and inspirational strategic litigation seeking redress for victims, all of which is creating a way forward.  The paradigm-shift will require initiation of fundamental changes of domestic legislations and case-law, and the establishment of mechanisms for reparations. Huge transformations that might seem overwhelming and impossible, but that are urgently needed, achievable and worth fighting for. We stand together to end these violations of fundamental rights and freedoms. We shall overcome.

Thank you.

PowerPoint presentations from the conference

Opening

Panel 1: Human Rights standards (CRPD) relevant for ending psychiatric coercion and for reparations

References used by Tina Minkowitz, word-format

Panel 2: Severity of human rights violations and harm done

Panel 3: Legal reforms to end psychiatric coercion

Panel 4: Access to justice, effective remedies and reparations – the important role of the courts

Panel 5: Strategic litigation & way forward – European Court of Human Rights & other regional human rights bodies, UN treaty bodies, regional and global perspectives

Unfortunately the first minutes is missing of the recording of the presentation from Diana Sheinbaum Lerner.

Human Rights Award Ceremony

The Human Rights Foundation ReDo was established in 2021 by Bjørg Njaa who left her whole inheritance to the aim of the foundation. ReDo organizes an annual conference where an award is given in memory of Bjørg Njaa’s son; “Ketil Njaa Solberg’s human rights award for battle against infringements, abuse and coercion in mental health”.