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AAPD Presented 2008 Henry B. Betts Award to International Human
Rights Disability Advocate Eric Rosenthal
Award
Presentation was made at Annual AAPD Leadership Gala March 5, 2008,
National Building Museum, Washington, DC
WASHINGTON, DC Ð The American Association of People with Disabilities
(AAPD) announces that the prestigious 2008 Henry B. Betts Award will be
presented to Eric Rosenthal for pioneering the field of international
human rights advocacy for people with disabilities and bringing
unprecedented international awareness to their concerns. He established
and is Executive Director of Mental Disability Rights International
(MDRI). Through MDRI, Rosenthal has investigated human rights conditions
in 23 countries. He has trained and supported the work of disability
activists around the world to fight these abuses.
The Henry B. Betts Award is named in honor of Henry B. Betts, M.D., a
pioneer in the field of rehabilitation medicine who started his career
with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in 1964, making it the base
for his career as an advocate for people with physical disabilities and
leader in the field of rehabilitation medicine, and who has devoted
himself to improving the quality of life for people with disabilities.
The award program was created in 1989 and is funded by the Prince
Charitable Trusts.
"Eric Rosenthal has helped to galvanize international attention to the
human rights violations that people with significant disabilities are
subjected to every day," says AAPD President and CEO Andrew J. Imparato.
"His vision, passion, strategic advocacy, and belief in
self-determination and human dignity are changing policies and changing
lives in a disability movement that is increasingly connected across the
globe."
Rosenthal grew up with manic depression in his family. He was interested
in psychiatry when he entered college, but after working on a
psychiatric ward became uncomfortable with the coercion he observed.
After law school he went to Mexico to document abuses against indigenous
people. He observed the dehumanization of people held naked and in filth
in psychiatric facilities and brought this to the attention of
international human rights groups, who were uninterested. In response,
Rosenthal established Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) in
1993.
MDRI's reports have been the first to bring widespread recognition that
the discrimination and abuse of people with disabilities constitutes a
violation of international human rights law. The United Nations recently
adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in no
small part due to Rosenthal's role promoting disability rights as human
rights.
In Uruguay, Hungary, Russia, Armenia, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Turkey,
Romania, Argentina, and most recently, Serbia, MDRI has drawn
international attention to horrendous conditions, helped change
government policies, and supported grassroots organizing around
disability rights. Rosenthal documents and effectively fights human
rights abuses, and has won precedent-setting legal victories before
international tribunals and brought support to people with mental
disabilities to fight for their own rights in these and more than 23
countries. In Paraguay, for instance, MDRI won a decision from the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordering the release of two
boys with autism held naked in isolation cells for years, and Paraguay
entered into a settlement with MDRI to deinstitutionalize its national
mental health system. Through the leadership of MDRI's Associate
Director, Laurie Ahern, MDRI is working with the President of Kosovo to
close Shtime Institution, Kosovo's psychiatric facility, and create a
community support system built on the leadership of local disability
activists. This model reform would make Kosovo the first region in
Central/Eastern Europe to end the segregation of people with mental
disabilities.
"Eric Rosenthal's work has been revolutionary," says Alison A. Hillman
de Vel‡squez, Director of Americas Program at MDRI. "He has labored
tirelessly for the recognition and enforcement of the rights of arguably
the most marginalized and stigmatized population of persons with
disabilities, persons with psychiatric diagnoses and intellectual
disabilities, and for the recognition of the rights of persons with
disabilities as human rights."
The 2008 Henry B. Betts Award will be presented collaboratively by AAPD
and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago at the 2008 AAPD Leadership
Gala, an awards ceremony and dinner, on March 5, 2008, at the National
Building Museum in Washington, DC. For additional information about this
event, visit the AAPD website: www.aapd.com, or call AAPD at
202-457-0046 (V/TTY).
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