%0 Journal Article
%T Expanding the Definition of the Right to Mental Health: Attending to Victims of Political Violence and Armed Conflict in Their Communities of Origin
%A Lisa J. Laplante and Roxana Castellon
%J Essex Human Rights Review
%D 2005
%I Essex Human Rights Centre
%X The right to mental health waits to gain universal recognition. States have ignored it, following thegeneral trend of relegating economic, social and cultural rights secondary to civil and political rights.The article examines how in the last decade several movements have brought this right to theforeground, in particular efforts to protect the rights of the mentally disabled, refugees and displacedpersons. It discusses how, as a result, institutions of the United Nations (UN), including the GeneralAssembly, Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the UN Commission of HumanRights and the World Health Organization have become more active in addressing the right tophysical and mental health, for example appointing Paul Hunt as Special Rapporteur on Health. Theauthors argue that these inroads on the right to mental health limit the definition and vision ofmental health. In particular, in countries undergoing post-conflict recovery there is the need to attendto the mental health of victims of serious human rights violations. However, until now there hasbeen no clear international policy or plan of action on how to address this problem. Calling for moreinternational discussion on this topic, the authors hope to contribute to the movement by exploringdifferent dimensions of mental health and by identifying three possible origins of a violation of theright to mental health. The authors present scenarios where a State fails to prevent the violation of theright to mental health and its related issues, as well as the state¡¯s corresponding obligation to providemental health reparations. They call for an expansion of the concept of the right to mental health onthe international agenda, and offer suggestions on how this effort may begin. Having conducted astudy on the right to mental health for victims of Peru¡¯s internal armed conflict, the authors will useexamples from Peru to illustrate different observations and conclusions.
%K The right to mental health
%K UN
%K economic and social rights
%U http://projects.essex.ac.uk/ehrr/V2N1/LaplanteCastellon.pdf