The European Court of Human Rights has rejected the request by the Bioethics Committee of the Council of Europe to develop an Advisory Opinion on two provisions of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo Convention) related to the forced treatment of persons with psychosocial disabilities.
In 2020, Mental Health Europe, Autism Europe, Inclusion Europe, the European Disability Forum and the International Disability Alliance, jointly submitted a Third Party intervention calling for the Court to consider the international convention, reports and decisions, and to ensure its advisory opinion aligns with those instruments. Their collective concerns were recognised and noted in the Court’s opinion.
The Court rejected the request of the Committee on Bioethics (DH-BIO) based on an advisory opinion on the matter not being within its competence and referred to the need for international legal standards to be respected, including those enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as interpreted by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As this decision is final, Mental Health Europe and the European Disability Forum are now calling urgently for the DH-BIO Committee and Member States to immediately end the regrettable work which is continuing on the Oviedo Convention, emphasising that it "reflects an outdated, biomedically driven approach".
For several years, organisations representing people with lived experience and persons with disabilities, as well as United Nations (UN) experts and internal bodies of the Council have all strongly criticised the DH-BIO Committee’s work on the Additional Protocol, and have urged for the withdrawal of the draft. The call for the withdrawal of the draft additional protocol to the Oviedo Convention is set to be voted on by members of the DH-BIO Committee in November 2021 and later approved by the Committee of Ministers in 2022.
