Self-advocates from around the world created a global report about their experiences, ideas, and expectations for closing institutions and fulfilling their right to living in the community.

This report includes:

  • what self-advocates say about the situation on institutions and living in the community;
  • what projects self-advocates have worked on that promote living in the community, and good examples of this work;
  • what self-advocates say should happen next in order to close institutions and make inclusion in the community real.

Why did self-advocates create this report?

Self-advocates from our network wrote this report to give to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The UN CRPD Committee are a group of experts who were writing guidelines for countries on how to close institutions and make sure everyone can live in the community.

The guidelines are called Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization of Persons with Disabilities, including in emergency situations. They were published in 2022.

When the UN CRPD Committee was making these guidelines in 2021, they organized 7 regional consultations in Africa, Asia Pacific, Central and South America, Caribbean and North America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Europe and European Union, Middle-East and North Africa. They collected input from more than 500 persons with disabilities and their representative organizations which helped them to identify the main key topics for the guidelines.

Unfortunately, the UN CRPD Committee consultation process was not accessible. This means that people with intellectual disabilities could not take part.

Because they were not included, self-advocates from Inclusion International wrote this report to give to the UN CRPD Committee, so that their ideas and experiences could still be included in the Committee’s guidelines.

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