Submission to United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Draft General Comment on Article 12 – Equal Recognition Before the Law

We support the Draft General Comment on Article 12 – Equal Recognition Before the Law (‘Draft General Comment’). Our submission is primarily concerned with drawing the Committee’s attention to issues around mental capacity. We argue that despite the Committee’s urging in the Draft General Comment for a split between legal capacity and mental capacity, mental capacity (and the related disciplines, professions, institutions and practices of psychology, psychiatry and neuropsychology through which mental capacity is defined and assessed) will continue to have cultural and material significance to the realisation of article 12 and the human rights of people with disability generally. We therefore make a number of recommendations concerning how the Committee might address mental capacity in the General Comment.