The Ministry of Health’s data show about 250 persons are annually judged to be incompetent because of mental disabilities, at the request of relatives who want to place these in residential institutions. Executive director of the Center for Legal Assistance for Persons with Disabilities Vitalie Mester told a news conference that any person can be judged incompetent at the relatives’ insistence and only the relatives can ask restoring their competency, which is an abuse, IPN reports.

According to specialists of the Center, most of the causes for which the rights of these persons are violated derive from Article 24 of the Civil Code, which envisions instituting protection for persons with disabilities who cannot manage their own affairs because they are mentally ill.

“The state instituted a mechanism by which the private individual is deprived of legal capacity, but didn’t create a mechanism allowing the person to regain this capacity individually. If the application to regain the legal competence is submitted to court by a person judged to be mentally incapable, it is rejected and cannot be examined,” said Vitalie Mester.

Under the law, a limited number of people can ask to judge a person to be mentally incompetent and also these can ask restoring the competence of this person. Specialists say this is an abuse as, when at least one person of those indicated wants a person to be declared unable to manage the own property individually, the person declared incompetent can never regain this ability by oneself.

Vitalie Mester said an abuse was also ascertained in the procedure of divorcing a person judged incompetent. The marriage with such a person can be ended at the request of the guardian, without the consent of the disabled person. The Law on NGOs also contains shortcomings that lead to discrimination against persons with disabilities, these being unable to be founders or managers of a nongovernmental organization.

A report by the Center for Legal Assistance for Persons with Disabilities shows about 15% of the persons judged to be incompetent and placed in psychoneurological hospitals could live in the community if there was a support service there. Another recommendation contained in the report is to modify the system for judging a person to be incompetent as the current procedures are outdated and do not meet the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.