This report is the product of an investigation spanning four years by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) into the human rights abuses perpetrated against institutionalized children and adults in Serbia. From July 2003 to August 2007, MDRI documented a broad array of human rights violations against people with disabilities, segregated from society and forced to live out their lives in institutions. Filthy conditions, contagious diseases, lack of medical care and rehabilitation, and a failure to provide oversight renders placement in a Serbian institution lifethreatening. Children and adults with disabilities tied down and restrained over a lifetime are being subjected to extremely dangerous and painful “treatment ” that is tantamount to torture. Serbia lacks adequate laws to protect people with disabilities from arbitrary detention in psychiatric hospitals or social care facilities. Despite an improved new guardianship law, people with mental disabilities can still have all their rights stripped away without adequate due process of law or right to counsel.
