23 In connection with the coordination mechanism stipulated in Article 33 of the CRPD, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights indicated that he, as an accredited UN National Human Rights Institution, would be happy to perform the tasks thereof as well. Following the NPM’s visit to the Closed Psychiatric Ward of Merényi Hospital, staff members of the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights contacted the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and came up with the common idea to prepare a brochure, written in plain language, providing useful information both to hospital personnel and to persons living with psycho-social disability. The NPM distributed the draft, the result of their joint efforts that had started in early 2017, among the members of the CCB. According to the representative of the MDAC, there is some controversy between the state’s international legal obligations deriving from the CRPD and the prevailing Hungarian regulations. It is important that persons with psychosocial disabilities who are placed and treated in psychiatric wards against their will should be aware of their rights and the way they can exercise those rights. In her view, the right to receive information and the provision of information on restrictive measures should be mentioned only very briefly; however, emphasizing the statutory prohibition of cage beds as well as the operation of patients’ rights representative would be important. As the terminology used in domestic legal regulations is medical in nature, she recommended the involvement of experts by experience in order to find out if it meets the requirement of being easily understandable. The comments of the representative of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union focused on comprehensibility, terminology, and the addition of visual elements (demonstrating procedural actions on a timeline would be appropriate). In her view, the report by the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights on the right to legal remedy of persons in emergency and mandatory treatment, 79 prepared within the frameworks of his fundamental-rights-protection activities, shows that several pieces of information contained in the draft should be known to patients right upon their admission (e.g., on delivering a ruling after conducting a court inspection). The constraints on the length of the leaflet notwithstanding, it should include some practical information (e.g., “May they take away my mobile phone?”). A colleague of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights explained that their objective was to prepare a publication providing the necessary information using simple, informal language that would be easy to understand. She explained that a psychiatrist, representing several organizations, who participated in the work of the preparatory group insisted on not oversimplifying the language since it could be confusing to those concerned if the healthcare personnel or the court inspection used a terminology different from that of the leaflet. They planned to involve a psychiatric ward where the practical use of the leaflet could be tested. She reminded the participants that, pursuant to the prevailing legal regulations, no institution could be compelled to make the leaflet accessible to the patients; therefore, if the leaflet is not compatible with the expectations of the service providers, or the director of a hospital cannot identify with its contents, it will not be put it on display. The leaflet would be published in three versions with different lengths: a short version for the patients, a longer one and an extended version for the healthcare personnel. It would provide an opportunity to disseminate information on the basis of the target audience. The Head of the Department added that such an information material would be in great need at other places of detention, prisons, and police stations as well. The representative of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee added that they had examined the language of the information materials distributed in police lock-ups and prisons, and they would prefer the introduction of a shorter, simpler version. Since they could not visit police lock-ups anymore, she suggested that the NPM should pay attention to this issue. In her view, the relationship between the 79 Report № AJB-305/2017

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