On October 10, TCI Global, with the support of our partners, Women Enabled International engaged with the CEDAW Committee (Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) through a thematic briefing on harmful stereotypes against women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities via an engaging panel discussion, focusing on legal capacity, deinstitutionalization and sexual reproductive health rights from a gender lens.

This discussion comes at a critical point when women with psychosocial disabilities are being left behind in conversations around disability and gender. This is the time to ‘really’ put up the intersectional lens on these issues and acknowledge that a woman can have multiple, intersecting identities. TCI Global, as a global OPD of persons with psychosocial disabilities, along with our allies from Inclusion International (Inclusion Ireland), shared our common experiences of legal shackling through discriminatory laws, legal incapacity leading to substituted decision-making and guardianship, forced institutionalization and being subjected to forced treatment, sterilization, abortions, violence and exclusion from community spaces, all owing to the harmful stereotypes against women and girls with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.

Look forward to working with our partners, Women Enabled International, on taking this crucial work forward and engaging with the upcoming General Recommendation on Harmful Stereotypes.