- Title
- Mental Capacity in Hong Kong: Inconsistencies, Uncertainties, and the Need for Reform
- Creator
- Chiu, Urania; Chow, Pok Yin S.
- Relation
- Legal Capacity, Disability and Human Rights p. 277-298
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781839704284.016
- Publisher
- Intersentia
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- In the area of mental health and capacity law, Hong Kong lags far behind many jurisdictions in terms of its compliance with international human rights standards. To this day, the Hong Kong Government’s approach to issues around mental capacity continues to be heavily based upon the medical model of mental illness and disability, which equates functional impairment with the loss of legal capacity and stresses the need for psychiatric intervention and rehabilitation. This is despite resulting inconsistencies with norms set out in the various international human rights treaties applicable to Hong Kong, including the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which had been ratified by the United Kingdom (and whose applicability was extended to the territory) prior to Hong Kong’s handover to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Both treaties are now entrenched in the Hong Kong Basic Law, with the ICCPR further domesticated through the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (HKBORO). In August 2008, the PRC ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), whose applicability was again extended to Hong Kong.1 However, the provisions of the CRPD have not been incorporated into domestic law and are, as such, not directly litigable in local courts.
- Subject
- mental health; capacity law; human rights; mental disorder
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1504147
- Identifier
- uon:55461
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781839703348
- Language
- eng
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