Fri, 15.04.16
The Komagata Maru incident: 376 passengers of mostly Sikh descent arrived in Vancouver and were refused entry into Canada due to the discriminatory laws of the time 102 years ago. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will apologise in the House of Commons on May 18: “As a nation, we should never forget the prejudice suffered by the Sikh community at the hands of the Canadian government of the day. We should not – and we will not.”
“An apology made in the House of Commons will not erase the pain and suffering of those who lived through that shameful experience. But an apology is not only the appropriate action to take, it’s the right action to take, and the House is the appropriate place for it to happen.”
Fri, 15.04.16
The World Health Organization’s Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020 stipulates human rights as a cross-cutting principle (WHO, 2013) and foresees global targets to update policies as well as mental health laws in line with international and regional human rights instruments. The international human rights agreements repeatedly refer to health, including mental health. The most pertinent provisions related to mental health are enshrined in the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which sets out human rights in an accessible and inclusive fashion to ensure the equal participation of persons with disabilities. The inconclusive description of disability in the treaty overtly refers to ‘mental impairment’ as part of an explicitly evolving understanding of disability. This text sketches some of the underlying concepts as they apply to the realm of mental health: non-discrimination of persons with disabilities and measures that should be taken to ensure accessibility in a holistic understanding; removal of social and attitudinal barriers as much as communication and intellectual barriers but also institutional hurdles. The CRPD’s paradigm shift away from framing disability mainly through deficits towards a social understanding of disability as the result of interaction and focusing on capacity is the core on which the provision of mental health services at community level to enable participation in society shall be ensured. Questions of capacity, also to make decisions and the possible need for support in so doing, are sketched out.
Global Mental Health, Cambridge Journal, Volume 3