3 December 2009, Budapest, Hungary. MDAC congratulates its Senior Advocacy Officer, Gabor Gombos, who was today awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in recognition of his work in the field of human rights of persons with disabilities.

A former theoretical physicist and survivor of psychiatry, Gabor has become a world-renowned advocate for the rights of persons with psycho-social (mental health) disabilities. At MDAC, Gabor takes part in international and domestic level advocacy, and has been one of the key actors in developing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and ensuring its implementation in Hungary.

20 November 2009. On today's 20th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) urges governments not to cut back on human rights-compliant services for children with disabilities.

Some governments are using the global economic crisis as a justification to decrease their social services and education budgets. As children with disabilities are often among the most vulnerable people in every country, MDAC encourages governments to allocate the maximum available resources to them. The concept of progressively realising economic, social and cultural rights means that governments cannot backslide, but rather that there must be measurable progress year on year.

11 November 2009. It is twenty years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the collapse of socialist systems in Europe. The first case heard by the European Court of Human Rights since this anniversary deals with a situation which has changed little in the past twenty years: the segregation of hundreds of thousands of people labelled with intellectual disabilities, mental health problems and other types of disabilities.

The two cases which were argued before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg yesterday - Mitev v. Bulgaria and Stanev v. Bulgaria - were both brought jointly by the nongovernmental organisations Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the Mental Disability Advocacy Center. Mr Mitev died in a social care institution last year and his case was continued by his sister. My Stanev attended the Court hearing in person, becoming the first person from a social care institution to bring his case before Europe's human rights court.