A/HRC/39/36 ensure the social determinants of health. She recalled that Brazil, Portugal and WHO had been partnering through different initiatives to raise mental health as a human rights priority for persons with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities. 10. During the interactive dialogue, representatives of the European Union, Brazil on behalf of the Foreign Policy and Global Health group, Colombia, Ecuador, Australia, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, Disability Rights International, the International Disability Alliance and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe took the floor. Brazil called for concerted efforts to support the paradigm shift away from coercion and exclusion. Colombia, Australia and Disability Rights International highlighted the need to take into account the intersecting identities of individuals — which compounded the disadvantage and discrimination facing women and girls, children, older persons, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, indigenous peoples, persons on a low income or living in poverty and those living in rural communities. The Plurinational State of Bolivia suggested that new ways of thinking and promoting health could be derived from the traditional knowledge and values of indigenous peoples to strengthen the harmony of the individual within the family and the community. The representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe announced the Assembly’s continued opposition to the drafting of the additional protocol to the Oviedo Convention concerning “the protection of human rights and dignity of persons with mental disorder with regard to involuntary placement and treatment”, joining other high-profile human rights bodies. She called for its withdrawal, as it was contrary to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; that was supported by the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and the International Disability Alliance. The World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry warned against any reform initiatives that reinforced the status quo by continuing to place psychiatry and the mental health system at the centre of power, and stressed the need for an approach that restored, and was centred on, the voices and rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities. III. Summary of the proceedings A. Setting the scene: mental health as a human rights issue 11. The panel, composed of three special rapporteurs, a representative of Transforming Communities for Inclusion-Asia and a representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), referred to the human rights abuses within mental health settings, ranging from discrimination and stigmatization to overmedicalization and the use of force. All speakers called for the abolition of those practices and concurred that the right to mental health could be promoted only in supportive and enabling environments at home, at school, in the workplace or in health-care settings that addressed the underlying determinants of health, such as poverty, discrimination, social exclusion and violence, which disproportionately affected persons with disabilities. All speakers stressed that persons using mental health services and persons with psychosocial disabilities, including children, women, and those living in poverty or belonging to other marginalized groups, must be the principal interlocutors in discussions about their rights, and that States had an obligation to take into account their opinions in all matters affecting them directly or indirectly, including the development of mental health services. 12. The Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, exposed the pervasive stigmatization, overmedicalization and use of force that resulted in violations of the human rights of users of those services and persons with psychosocial disabilities worldwide. He referred to the deep power asymmetries, the predominance of the biomedical model and the biased use of knowledge, within psychiatry and mental health, as obstacles to the realization of rights. He asserted that the status quo was maintained by the concepts of dangerousness and of medical necessity to “fix a disorder”, which was not supported by modern evidence and continued to justify the use of non-consensual measures as “exceptions”. 5