The winner of Ketil Njaa Solberg’s Human Rights Award 2024 is Tina Minkowitz.
The «Ketil Njaa Solberg Human Rights Award for the fight against violations, abuse and coercion in mental health care» has been established in memory of Bjørg Njaa’s son Ketil.
Here is the board of the Human Rights Foundation Redo’s justification for awarding this prize to Tina Minkowitz:
About the award
The award is given to a person or an organization who have distinguished themselves through their work against infringements, abuse and coercion against persons with psychosocial disabilities and/or work to strengthen the human rights of this group. The award is 20 000 NOK and is handed out from the Ketil Njaa Solberg’s memorial fund, established and managed by the Human Rights Foundation ReDo.
About this year’s award winner
Mental health systems across the globe have a long history of grave human rights violations; deprivations of liberty in psychiatric institutions, forced injections of mind-altering drugs, electroshocks, isolation and restraints have left victims devastated and traumatized.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) brought light into the darkness for survivors of forced psychiatry. The Convention prohibits psychiatric coercion and sets forth the right of all persons with disabilities to make their own decisions and to control their own lives on an equal basis with others.
The award winner played a central role in the drafting and negotiation of the CRPD, serving on the Working Group and on the steering committee of the International Disability Caucus, and in the process, leading a team of users and survivors of psychiatry from all parts of the world, from 2002 until the adoption of the Convention in 2006. At a crucial moment in history, she was there to shape the content of the convention, introducing key provisions to support full legal capacity and the abolition of forced psychiatry. Since the adoption of the CRPD she has continued to influence the interpretation and application of the convention through numerous meetings and consultations in the UN and through essential written contributions. Recently, she contributed to the development of the Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization, a monumental step in recognizing the right to redress for harm done through psychiatric institutionalization and coercion.
From 2002-2015 the award winner represented the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. Her work has always been rooted in a survivor of psychiatry perspective. She has carried the voice of the victims and has had a unique ability to describe the indescribable, to give voice to our common experiences of pain, suffering, fear, trauma and many forms of harm caused by psychiatric abuse and oppression.
She has done valuable analysis of forced psychiatric interventions within the torture-framework.
The award winner has said: the power we have as survivors is “to name the violence, to name the human rights violation. We name it as torture.” Later, UN Special Rapporteurs on Torture have acknowledged that forced psychiatric interventions meet international definition of torture standards and have called for an absolute ban on these practices. Such important recognitions do not happen in a vacuum. They are the result of tireless advocacy and awareness-raising, to which the award winner has made major contributions.
As a human rights lawyer she has done extensive writing and advocacy on topics such as non-discrimination, legal capacity, freedom from torture, criminal responsibility, restorative justice, reparations, de-institutionalization, de-medicalization and crisis support, to mention some.
The award winner is analytical, strategic and well-articulated. A freethinker. Her work is independent and forefront, always looking ahead at the next legal problem to be framed and conceptualized and the next challenge to be solved. She is a brilliant developer of new ideas and legal arguments, always based on non-discrimination, free and informed consent of the person concerned and freedom from coercion and ill-treatment.
The award winner has said that “we will win, if only enough of us pull together, if only we find the right openings and opportunities to influence the systems that control much of our lives, if only the vision being promoted in the CRPD can act as a magnet to draw all the iron shards in one direction”. She has herself taken the lead for us to reach that goal. She has been a global leader for our human rights movement, a front fighter who has stepped up on crucial occasions, defending our equal rights without compromises or wavering. She has found those openings, built networks, like the absolute prohibition network, and managed to get people to pull together. She has tirelessly promoted the CRPD on every possible and impossible occasion.
She is a strong voice and a fearless human rights defender. We thank the award winner for her long and persistent fight against psychiatric coercion and for the full and equal human rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, users and survivors of psychiatry.
The Ketil Njaa Solberg’s Human Rights Award 2024 goes to Tina Minkowitz.
Award ceremony
The award ceremony took place at the Human Rights Foundation Redo’s conference «Ending psychiatric coercion – urgent need for effective remedies and reparations» September 10th 2024.
