10 applicable standards, because they are uniformed and armed persons. The Protector of Citizens informed the public of these shortcomings and made proposals for their elimination7. The existing psychiatric hospitals are large: between several hundreds and one thousand patients are placed in each of them. By and large, they mostly resemble asylums, because many patients placed in them are excluded from the community, most of them for well over a month, while some remain committed for ten years or so or even for life. Many of the patients are kept there primarily due to social considerations, as no community-based treatment and support are available. Court decisions on involuntary commitment of persons with mental disorders are still mainly based on expert evaluations of physicians employed in hospitals which proposed such measure. In addition, there are still cases of consent for hospitalisation and treatment in a hospital being given by agitated persons brought by the police, although statements given under such circumstances cannot be legally relevant. Certain users of social welfare homes, including children with developmental disorders, are isolated for extended periods of time. No significant progress towards deinstitutionalisation of such institutions has been made so far. As early as in 2013, NPM issued a recommendation to the competent authorities to take all necessary actions with the aim of reducing the existing number of users in the “Veternik” residential centre in the next two years, i.e. to reduce the number of over 500 users of various age to 100 adults or 50 children. The Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs has not fully cooperated with the Protector of Citizens and has not taken the necessary measures to remedy the identified shortcomings pursuant to the recommendations given to it. Indeed, the Minister has, on several occasions, publicly opposed the recommendations and warned the Serbian public there had been instances of cannibalism among the persons placed in a facility. It is completely inappropriate to state the above as an argument not to go ahead with the deinstitutionalisation of facilities where persons with intellectual impairments are placed. In addition, the Protector of Citizens is of the opinion that bringing up the issue of cannibalism among persons with intellectual impairments serves no other purpose but to unnecessarily scare the public, which further reinforces the stigmatisation of those persons. In Conclusions 74. of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia of 23 October 2014 states the following: “With regard to the assessment of the Protector of Citizens that many children are still placed in social welfare homes because conditions have not been provided for their community care; that those children are excluded from the normal social environment for unacceptably long periods, and thus they do not acquire or over time lose social and other skills necessary for living outside the institutions; that financial and other living conditions in such institutions are not compliant with the applicable standards and that understaffing is a pressing issue; that the number of children placed in those institutions significantly exceeds the statutory maximum and that in many cases, contrary to regulations, children are placed together with adult users; and that the existing shortcomings of the institutional child care system display elements of inhuman or degrading treatment, the National Assembly orders the competent public authorities to intensify activities on deinstitutionalisation, i.e. reduction of capacities of the existing social welfare homes and their phasing out, while ensuring full community child care and providing comprehensive support.” Increased supervision of users is not performed as increased monitoring of users and provision of additional support/care; instead, it involves de facto isolation. What is worrying is the fact that demented persons in gerontology centres and care homes for elderly are deprived of liberty exclusively on the basis of a physician’s opinion. 7http://ombudsman.npm.rs/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=111&Itemid=114&l ang=sr.