A/HRC/41/34 when legal barriers, such as the criminalization of poverty, homelessness or drug use, are removed. 26. Determinants of mental health and measures taken to promote mental health must be accessible without discrimination, particularly for those in vulnerable situations. This includes physical and economic accessibility to determinants, such as non-violent school and home environments, healthy workplaces that respect the full spectrum of labour rights, and a robust and active civil society supporting the struggles of those furthest behind. 27. Determinants of mental health and measures taken to promote mental health must also be acceptable to the individuals and communities involved. Such a context requires the active participation of communities and the fostering of civic space. Acceptable action will be determined by the unique needs of society throughout its life cycle, as well as genderspecific requirements and respect for diversity, including cultural and neurodiversity. 28. Actions taken to realize the right to mental health must be of good quality, and they require evidence-based data and information that is multidisciplinary. Responses to mental health conditions that are based on the use of coercion, as an exception allowed in legislation, are becoming the rule. Continued investment in policies and services, with prevailing patterns of coercion, excessive medicalization and institutionalization, are a serious obstacle to the effective realization of the right to mental health. Such systems reinforce vicious cycles of stigmatization, discrimination and social exclusion, and may be more detrimental than the mental health conditions they are supposed to treat. E. International assistance and cooperation 29. The obligation of international cooperation for the realization of the right to mental health is recognized in international treaties and reinforced by the commitment to a global partnership for sustainable development made in Sustainable Development Goal 17. States in a position to assist must provide lower-income States with international assistance to help them realize the right to mental health. There is an immediate obligation to refrain (or withdraw) from the provision of development assistance that is discriminatory, or where violence or other human rights violations are committed. International cooperation to promote well-being must not be viewed as an economic or moral benefit for the Governments involved, but as a legal obligation. 30. The Special Rapporteur reiterates previous calls for the allocation of adequate resources to international assistance, which requires a more balanced, rights-based response that emphasizes the promotion of mental health (see A/HRC/35/21). While development assistance towards the global promotion of mental health is on the rise, overseas development assistance budgets fail to exceed 1 per cent of investment in mental health. 17 Global aid indicators and trends continue to have a focus on biased knowledge from biomedical research and programmes, which, alone, cannot be considered compliant with right to health obligations. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that a human rights-based approach is not fully integrated into international projects that assist developing countries in improving their mental health policies and services. Without clear efforts to promote research and action on the political and social epidemiology of distress, including poverty, inequality, discrimination, State repression and corporate capture, these vital issues will remain on the margins of global mental health action. 31. Rebalancing development assistance for mental health promotion requires diverse leadership and civil society engagement. There is a human rights imperative for mental health promotion to be scaled across the various development sectors: from rural farming, gender-based violence programming, migration and humanitarian assistance, private sector development and international trade to health-care sector reforms, including deinstitutionalization. All development stakeholders have an important role to play in supporting and enabling this work. 17 See Patel, V. and others, “Sustainable development and global mental health – a Lancet commission” in The Lancet, vol. 387 (2016), pp. 1143–1145. 7