This is No. 1 in a trio of OliverTalks posts about Butabika hospital, Uganda’s premier psychiatric facility, which Oliver visited with colleagues last Thursday. It lays out how people are admitted and forcibly treated outside the ambit of a law, and how therefore people are unlawfully detained.

“My father brought me here 16 years ago”, said Sanjaya, a 29-year old woman, in Bengali. Her family appear to have freaked out when, at the age of 13, she started having mental health problems. Instead of getting some support, they dumped her into the Lumbini Park institution, where she was robbed of her youth, her education, and her safety. Detained there for the past 16 years without committing any crime, she was allowed out for a day two years ago. She returned to her family who had abandoned her. “I went and cried. I wanted to stay, but my family didn’t want me”, she told me.

3 September 2013, Budapest. In his latest post, our Executive Director gives his alternative to Secretary of State John Kerry's speech.