By The European Times | Created at 2026-09-01 10:26:42 | Updated at 2026-09-26 18:28:23
3 weeks ago
The confidential expert legal analysis that had been prepared ahead of the final review of the draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention is framed in line with a deceptive 2011 Statement by the Council of Europe’s Committee on Bioethics. That 2011 statement is pretending a compatibility between the UN CRPD and the possibility to use coercive measures in psychiatry. The Statement has been proven to present a falsehood, yet, it is promoted to this day by the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics and is still present in the current review of the Additional Protocol by the Committee of Ministers.
Deceptive 2011 text still a reference point
“There was already a discussion a long time ago about compatibility and there was a statement published. It’s on the Committee’s webpage. The Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBIO) has had that discussion a long time ago,” Laurence Lwoff, Secretary of the Council of Europe’s CDBIO told the European Times.
Laurence Lwoff was involved in drafting the June 2026 revised text of the draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo convention as part of the Secretariat through the technical procedures related to Council of Europe treaties. Photo credit: THIX PhotoThe Committee on Bioethics’ “Statement on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” of 2011 was formulated as part of the initial consideration whether a Council of Europe text regulating the use of coercive measures in psychiatry would be in conflict with the UN CRPD or not. Laurence Lwoff who has been in the Secretariat of the Committee dealing with bioethics in its various forms since 2002 was herself involved in the writing of the 2011 Statement based on input from discussions in the Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI), as it was called at the time.
While it seemingly concerns the UN CRPD the Statement in the decisive point however factually only considers the Committee on Bioethics’ own Convention, the Oviedo Convention, and its reference work – the European Convention on Human Rights. The Statement is referring to these as “international texts”.
The statement has been noted as rather deceptive. It lays out that the Council of Europe’s Committee on Bioethics considered the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, particularly whether articles 14, 15 and 17 were compatible with “the possibility to subject under certain conditions a person who has a mental disorder of a serious nature to involuntary placement or involuntary treatment, as foreseen in other national and international texts.”
The statement then confirms this without any clarification of how one would derive at this conclusion nor any reference to relevant articles or texts. In fact, it provides no reference to the UN CRPD articles, nor the convention’s explanatory memorandum, or other available texts of the Ad Hoc Committee negotiations that led to the adoption of the CRPD. None of these publicly available documents would allow for any such conclusion as is stated in the 2011 “Statement on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics.
And the UN CRPD Committee that is the body empowered to interpret the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was not contacted in the process of this 2011 analysis.
The statement in summary was politically formulated and not based on a factual analysis of the UN CRPD itself, its explanatory memorandum, nor texts of negotiation process of the UN CRPD formulation. There are no minutes of the Steering Committee on Bioethics meeting detailing who proposed to not consider or disregard the authoritative UN interpretation of the UN CRPD that would clarify whether it would or would not authorise the possibility to subject certain persons with a “mental disorder” to involuntary detainment in psychiatry.
Bioethics Committee Statement vs Oviedo Convention
Comparative text on the key point in the 2011 statement of the Committee on Bioethics show it in reality does not consider the UN CRPD nor the spirit in which it is to be read, but only refer to text straight out of the Oviedo convention:
- The Council of Europe Bioethics Committee’s Statement on the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: “Involuntary treatment or placement may only be justified, in connection with a mental disorder of a serious nature, if from the absence of treatment or placement serious harm is likely to result to the person’s health or to a third party.”
- Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, Article 7: “Subject to protective conditions prescribed by law, including supervisory, control and appeal procedures, a person who has a mental disorder of a serious nature may be subjected, without his or her consent, to an intervention aimed at treating his or her mental disorder only where, without such treatment, serious harm is likely to result to his or her health.”
UN CRPD Committee: The draft Additional Protocol is fundamentally incompatible with the UN CRPD
The UN CRPD Committee, that is the body empowered to interpret the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has clarified the matter to the contrary. In a Statement to the Council of Europe of 15 January 2026 the UN Committee noted that “the statement made and adopted on the 7th of November 2011 by the Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI) “on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” which appears to declare the compatibility between the draft Additional Protocol and the Convention, contradicts the Convention and the jurisprudence of the CRPD Committee.”
The UN CRPD Committee specified “We hereby underscore that the draft Additional Protocol is fundamentally incompatible with the Convention, and in contradiction to this we note repeated assertions to the contrary by the CDBI since 2011. Further, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reiterate that it is the only body that has the competences and expertise to interpret the scope of the Convention.”
“This statement by the Bioethics Committee, of compatibility between the draft Additional Protocol and the Convention, was used by that committee throughout the drafting process to justify its position in formulating the draft Additional Protocol and remains published on its website (now CDBIO) on mental health care,” the UN CRPD Committee further noted. “It is particularly troubling that the CDBIO has continued to claim compatibility while the CRPD Committee since 2015 has pointed out that the drafted additional Protocol in the whole is contrary to the spirit and letter of the CRPD.”
The concern and position of the UN CRPD Committee has been backed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – Regional Office for Europe and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health, the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General on Disability and Accessibility, and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights.
