| Summary: | FORGOTTEN PEOPLE documents the frightening similarities in the degrading treatment of people with mental disabilities in Mexico, Armenia, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia. Yet this problem is not confined to Latin America or Eastern Europe but extends around the globe to Western European countries and the United States. Despite the growth of democratic institutions, people with mental disabilities remain disenfranchised and subject to serious human rights abuses. Often they are segregated from societies in closed institutions, marginalized from society by poverty and stigma, discriminated against, and effectively excluded from public life. Model social service programs have been created in a number of countries, but these are more the exception than the rule. While there has been significant growth in advocacy for people with mental disabilities in recent years, nations have never been held accountable for persistent human rights abuses. Widespread human rights abuses against people with mental disabilities have traditionally received little or no attention from mainstream international human rights groups, United Nations human rights oversight agencies, or international development organizations. This has left people with mental disabilities particularly vulnerable to abuse.
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