Convention of Rights 18: Right to personal integrity

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD) forms the foundation of disability rights laws in Uganda and is the model for the Persons With Disabilities Act (PWDA) 2006. The CRPD underlines and recognizes that persons with disabilities (PWDs) are entitled to all the human rights enunciated in the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you are a PWD the rights in the CRPD are your rights, if you do not have a disability it is your duty to uphold and promote these rights.

Article 17 of the CRPD says that PWDs have the right to protection of their physical and mental integrity on an equal basis.

The right to personal integrity is the right to be treated in a humane manner, in a way that preserves mental and physical wholeness. It recognizes that neither the state nor anyone else has the right to physically or mentally harm another person or PWD.

No one has the right to treat a PWD as less of a human being or to interfere with their minds and bodies. People have the right to be respected as they are. The right to physical and mental integrity is violated for instance: By forcing a PWD to be sterilized or sterilizing them without their knowledge, or over medicating people in residential care or forcing someone into marriage (see The Development of Disability Rights Under International Law: From Charity to Human Rights). This right has a lot to do with informed consent and the right to make choices in full understanding of the facts. 

The 2016 report Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Uganda cites an example of of the infringement of the right to personal integrity in Ugandan law:

The Mental Treatment Act still provides for involuntary institutionalization of persons with disabilities in institutions. There is no appeal mechanism apparent in the Act. Indeed, there are cases of persons who have spent up to years in Butabika hospital, without any review of their individual cases.

If you are a PWD you have the right to give your informed consent for any medical treatment. 

Jimmy Acellam Odoki is a mental health advocate.
A call for dignified treatment of mental health patients in Uganda.
The dignity of the mental health service users is very important because they are very sensitive to the way they handled despite the illusion that they know nothing in their state. It is not uncommon to find some people with mental illness, especially in rural areas, being tied up with ropes and being subjected to the most inhumane treatment. Others are forcefully detained and taken for treatment without their consent.

This is written in Article 17 of the CRPD in the following way:

Article 17

Protecting the integrity of the person

Every person with disabilities has a right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others.