My name is Jeff Makana a human rights activist and torture survivor.
I have now been living in Switzerland for the past 10yrs after being tortured in Kenya in Dec 2009 due to my work as an activist agitating for the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities inline with the United Nations Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities(UNCRPD).
Jeff in Basel
Work and active citizenship are integral part of the UNCRPD. Often people like myself who have experienced psychosocial disabilities are discriminated from civil and political participation and this creates unintended consequences some leading social economic exclusion.
As a survivor of torture, I believed that I will be accepted as an asylum seeker in Switzerland and get a chance to continue my life but that was not the case as my asylum was rejected despite having been invited to Switzerland as an activist to attend a UN workshop in Geneva on shadow reporting, a UN mechanism in the Universal periodic review of UN treaties. Despite the rejection of my asylum request I was granted a humanitarian permit to stay in Switzerland renewable every year. This permit categorized as permit f has it's challenges, mainly challenges with getting gainful employment or civil and political participation. In the state I live, Canton Jura immigrants can participate in local government if here for 10yrs and with an accepted asylum request or permit B to be precise.
Article 29 of the CRPD sets out the framework for persons with disabilities' participation in political and public life and stipulates that state parties shall “guarantee to persons with disabilities political rights and the opportunity to enjoy them on equal basis with others.” To achieve this, state parties should domesticate the UNCRPD. Switzerland has signed but not ratified the UNCRPD, a measure more symbolic than one that empowers persons with psychosocial disabilities.
Jeff in Davos
People with psychosocial disabilities have equal right to study and work, but too often this sector of the population face discrimination and fail to experience work or active citizenship. Regarding persons with psychosocial disabilities only as objects of charity and medical treatments denies us equal rights and capabilities to make our own decisions in Life, be it work or further studies or launching a small businesses.
“At the same time, around the world, there is a long history of injustice embedded in the mental health care sector, and this provokes the challenging question of how to change current practices, which have been routinized over centuries,” writes the international team of authors led by Dr. Sebastian von Peter. This is also true today in Switzerland with marginalization of persons with psychosocial disabilities as myself struggling to find work or study opportunity to enter the highly skilled Swiss job market and active citizenship.
A special thanks to Jeff Makana for writing and contributing this article to our blog!