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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on “Intellectual disability in Switzerland: the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as a vehicle for progress”. Design/methodology/approach This commentary highlights the importance of including people with intellectual disabilities in human rights reporting. The commentary builds on available data from academic research as well as civil society reports. Findings Three main aspects are presented: the lack of involvement of people with intellectual disabilities in human rights reporting, the barriers to their participation in developing and publishing human rights reports and possible strategies to tackle those barriers. Originality/value The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities (CRPD) makes it mandatory to include people with intellectual disabilities in policy-making as well as in monitoring the CRPD. Academics need to change their practice to include people with intellectual disabilities in human rights research.

In this paper, we explore critically deinstitutionalisation reform, focusing specifically on the postsocialist region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We argue that\ud deinstitutionalisation in postsocialist CEE has generated re-institutionalising outcomes, including renovation of existing institutions and/or creation of new, smaller settings that have nevertheless reproduced key features of institutional life. To explain these trends, we first consider the historical background of the reform, highlighting the legacy of state socialism and the effects of postsocialist neoliberalisation. We then discuss the impact of ‘external’ drivers of deinstitutionalisation in CEE, particularly the European Union and its funding, as well as human rights discourses incorporated in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The analysis is supported by looking at the current situation in Hungary and Bulgaria through recent reports by local civil society organisations. In conclusion, we propose some definitional tactics for redirecting existing resources towards genuine community-based services.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities published by International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and Wiley Periodicals LLC. The disabled people's movements have successfully influenced public policies and laws. Self-advocates who are autistic or have an intellectual disability have been working alongside other advocates for recent decades. Practice theory has rarely been used in disability research. This study explores “practice theory” through the analysis of interviews with advocates and self-advocates within the autism and intellectual disability advocacy movements. This is a qualitative, empirical study based on interviews and focus groups with 43 participants in two countries. The data were collected in 2016–17. Content analysis was used to identify themes. Data indicate that everyday practices of self-advocates and advocates such as parent advocates and professional advocates largely overlap. There are five major types of practices that are done by nearly all advocates: “informing and being informed,” “using media,” “supporting each other,” “speaking up,” and “bureaucratic duties.” Contrary to several previous studies on self-advocacy that emphasized “speaking up” as the main activity in advocacy, this study found that most practices of advocates and self-advocates are “para-advocacy” practices that may or may not lead directly to “speaking up.” Practices of self-advocates are often embedded in other everyday activities people do. The line between practices that belong to self-advocacy and practices outside self-advocacy may not always be clear even to self-advocates. Findings also indicate that hierarchies in the disability movement influence strongly the position of self-advocates.

The article is a critical analysis of the human rights approach within the disabled people's movement. The paper also builds on empirical data collected in the UK and Hungary. The article is in Hungarian.

This chapter focuses on disabled people’s right to independent living – as stipulated in Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – by discussing the reform of ‘deinstitutionalisation’ in present-day, postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe. We argue that postsocialist deinstitutionalisation has often produced re-institutionalising outcomes that have defied the very aims and principles of the reform. To explain this, we consider the impact of inherited state socialist constructions of disability, neoliberal reforms following the demise of state socialism in 1989, and more recent processes EU integration. These general historical and social-theoretical considerations are supported by content analysis of disability policy documents and case studies of domestic mobilisations from Hungary and Bulgaria. In conclusion, we propose strategies for moving ahead with deinstitutionalisation reform in the postsocialist region of Central and Eastern Europe so that the provisions of Article 19 could be effectively realised.

Background: Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), human rights have become central for disability advocacy. The CRPD requires that disabled people and their representative organisations (DPOs) have a prominent role in the implementation and monitoring of the Convention. However, the representation of people with intellectual disabilities or autistic people is still often indirect, carried out by parents or professionals. \ud \ud Methods: This is a qualitative research which looks at how self-advocates (SAs) with intellectual disabilities or autism participate in DPOs and how they see the role of human rights and laws such as the CRPD in their advocacy. Data was collected in the UK and in Hungary between October 2016 and May 2017. A total of 43 advocates (SAs and other advocates) were interviewed. For the analysis, thematic analysis was used. \ud \ud Results: findings indicate that most participants have limited knowledge of the CRPD and human rights. Human rights are usually seen as vague and distant ideas, less relevant to everyday lives. SAs may not feel competent to talk about the CRPD. The inclusion of SAs in DPOs is mostly tokenistic, lacking real participation. \ud \ud Conclusions: The CRPD can only bring meaningful change to SAs if they get full membership in DPOs.