The German Federal Ministry for Justice attempts to turn the CRPD against us
Following is an introduction to a report of our struggle.
For the full explanation please read the robot-translated texts in your language in our blog:
https://www.zwangspsychiatrie.de/2020/07/laesst-sich-die-justiz-minister-konferenz-so-verschaukeln
and https://www.zwangspsychiatrie.de/2020/07/bundesjustizministerium-zensiert-unsere-stellungnahme
A department of the German Federal Ministry for Justice has recently published the draft (500 pages) of a new guardianship law.
It pretends to refer to a key provision of the Concluding observations on the initial report of Germany of the UN-Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published on 13 May 2015, see on Page 5:
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G15/096/31/PDF/G1509631.pdf?OpenElement
Equal recognition before the law (art.12)
25. The Committee is concerned that the legal instrument of guardianship (“rechtliche Betreuung”), as outlined in and governed by the German Civil Code is incompatible with the Convention.
26.The Committee recommends that the State party:
(a) Eliminate all forms of substituted decision-making and replace it with a system of supported decision-making, in line with the Committee’s general comment No.1 (2014) on equal recognition before the law;
(b) Develop professional quality standards for supported decision-making mechanisms; ..
In the explanation of the draft the department of the German Federal Ministry for Justice (the head of the department is Annette Schnellenbach) admitted openly to ignore a) and claim compatibility to Art 12 CRPD:
In any case, the current legal and political discussion in Germany largely agrees that the legal assistance instrument regulated in §§1896 ff. BGB is compatible with Article 12 UN-CRPD. The opposite legal opinion of the UN-Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which it expressed in its „Concluding observations on the First State Report of Germany“ published in April 2015, is largely not shared.
The CRPD is used for a trick to negate it’s core values:
On the lobbying of the professional paid guardians, Annette Schnellenbach ignores a) and turns against our self-determination b) (professionalisation of guardians) to in fact continue with the substituted decision-making as „well being“ from the ruling point of doctors and judges. In doing so it would destruct the already achieved possibility of self determination and supported decision-making mechanism via a representation agreement including an advance directive. Because judges could under the new law rule that a person authorized by a representation agreement has to fulfil the same quality standards as these professional guardians. Especially in a disagreement in medical questions judges can rule based on this reasoning that the representation agreement is invalid and is replaced by a professional guardian, who changes the disagreement to an agreement to forced diagnonsense, incarceration and forced treatment – the typical procedures of coercive psychiatry.
The German Federal Ministry for Justice follows the President of the Ethics Committee of the World Psychiatric Association, Paul Appelbaum, who proclaimed in 2019: As best I can tell, there are three alternatives: ignore the CRPD, reinterpret it, or amend it. Furthermore, that psychiatric societies should persuade governments to „ignore the convention“. See editorial: http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e172f3_71d7c75219fb432c9cd2a13c304ec3de.pdf
Especially unfair is that this organistion of the professional guardians has engaged a well paid public relation agency to push through their demands.