NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF KOREA Submission to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – July 2022 Article 12 Equal Recognition before the Law 12-1 Efforts to replace the adult guardianship system with supported decisionmaking □ Current status and problems ㅇ As for guardianship system in Korea, substituted decision-making such as adult guardianship which grants comprehensive power to guardians accounts for the biggest part. 11 Currently, among the different types of guardianships, the adult guardianship type, which does not consider the will of the person in charge is used at the highest rate of more than 10 times compared to other types.12 In addition, there are cases where adult guardianship is determined even when applications are made for specific guardianship or limited guardianship. As such, there is a lack of effort to prepare mechanisms for conversion into supported decision-making. ㅇ As the government stated in the National Report that under current law, the will of the principal should be taken into account and legal procedures require the hearing of the statement of the person, it seems recommendations are well implemented, but when the Commission asked for the number of guardianship adjudication where the principal was examined, written agreement form was submitted, guardianship was commenced or guardians were appointed against the will of the principal, or guardian was dismissed or changed due to misdeed or inappropriate performance of duty, the government answered that there is no separate statistics, making it hard to identify the level of conformity of the legal provisions concerned. ㅇ In addition, no education is conducted on the legal ability of persons with disabilities and the mechanism of supported decision-making in accordance with Article 12 of the Convention and General Comment No. 1. ㅇ Due to this, the situation where persons with intellectual disabilities, persons with autism and persons with psychosocial disabilities are treated as mentally incapacitated throughout the legal system and practices of ‘guardians’ decide everything on behalf of persons with disabilities are repeated.13 22