When Gayane saw Apostles of Darkness, a production at the Gyumri State Drama Theatre based on Spanish playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo’s In the Burning Darkness, she recognised many parallels with her own life.

The play focuses on a group of people, blind since birth with one exception, who are taken to an institution where every aspect of life is controlled. Those residing there are taught that life there is the best possible, that nothing exists behind the institution’s walls. Only one young boy, who became blind later in his youth, sees otherwise.

‘He says to them: “You present blindness as if it’s an advantage — as if living in this home is an advantage. But you know nothing about life beyond these walls” ’, Gayane recalls.

The boy wants them to imagine another life — one where they can leave the institution, live in their own homes, and make their own decisions.  For that, he is punished. The staff strip him of his own clothes and force him back into the institution’s uniform.

‘He wanted his father to take him home’, Gayane says, but his father refused. He said, “Your mother is sick. I can’t take care of both of you”. And the boy asks, “Why does no one need me?” ’.

Gayane pauses before emphasising, ‘It was just like our life’.

For nearly 30 years, Gayane lived in a series of psychiatric hospitals, social care institutions, and a group home after an Armenian court stripped her of legal capacity. Like the residents in the play, she was told that institutional life was the best place for her.

In 2023, at the age of 58, she regained her legal capacity and left institutional care. For the first time in decades, she could decide how to live her life.

Yet, while most people naturally develop networks of support through family, friendships, work, and participation in the community, these years of institutionalisation had deprived Gayane of these opportunities. As she soon discovered, freedom can be daunting — especially when people are expected to exercise their legal rights and manage their lives without the support needed to make those rights meaningful.

Even so, Gayane emphasises that institutionalisation is never a solution.

‘People with disabilities should not be locked up and forced to stay somewhere, being told that it’s the right thing for them’, she says.

‘It’s a sad place — an institution’, she adds. ‘There is nothing joyful about living there’.

Armenia’s disproportionate restrictions on individual autonomy

Gayane grew up in Yerevan with her family. Soon after her father’s death, however, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Under Armenian law, adults with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities may be deprived of legal capacity if, ‘due to a mental disorder’, they are considered “unable to understand or manage their actions”. Courts make these decisions primarily on the basis of psychiatric assessments, at the request of relatives, psychiatric institutions, or guardianship authorities.

In 1995, when Gayane was 30, a court deprived her of legal capacity — two years later, her sister was appointed her guardian. Despite formally serving in that role, her sister maintained little contact with Gayane.

A guardian is granted broad authority to make legal decisions on the person’s behalf. In practice, this affects nearly every aspect of life. Individuals may lose the right to vote, manage property and social benefits, sign contracts, and make healthcare decisions. They may also be placed in mental health hospitals and social care institutions without their consent. Marriage may be prohibited or terminated, and parental and adoption rights are restricted. Employment opportunities are also affected, as Armenia’s labour law recognises only legally capable individuals as competent employees.

As a result, deprivation of legal capacity effectively places control over their life in the hands of others.

While Gayane spent many years in the psychiatric hospital, in 2002, she was transferred to a social care institution. Then, in 2016, she moved to a small group home. All the while, her sister remained her guardian, with Gayane herself unable to control her fate.

In 2010, Armenia ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), committing to recognise that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life. Yet the country’s legal framework continues to rely on substitute decision-making through guardianship.

Both Armenia’s Constitutional Court in 2015 and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2019 criticised the system for imposing disproportionate restrictions on individual autonomy. Despite these rulings, comprehensive reform has stalled.

Although Armenian law allows courts to restore legal capacity, making that happen can be difficult. People seeking restoration must initiate new court proceedings, requiring legal support, and must undergo psychiatric examinations to determine whether they can ‘understand and control their actions’. These processes are both financially and emotionally demanding.

Armenian law does not guarantee quality state-funded legal aid for many people with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities. As a result, individuals often rely on civil society organisations for assistance.

In Gayane’s case, the Coalition for Inclusive Legal Reforms, a disability rights organisation, helped initiate court proceedings and arranged legal representation. She faced a separate hurdle with the mandatory psychiatric examination.

Because the group home where she lived had not formally registered her address, she was initially instructed to travel to another region for the assessment. To avoid the journey, she arranged to undergo the examination at a nearby psychiatric hospital, paying approximately ֏30,000 ($80) out of pocket.

Compared with many other cases, Gayane’s restoration process was relatively straightforward. Her sister did not oppose the proceedings.

In other cases, restoration can take much longer. One man faced repeated challenges from his daughter, who requested multiple additional psychiatric examinations, and appealed the court’s decision restoring his legal capacity. It took more than two years for the court to issue a final judgement, and the case has continued on appeal.

Reliable statistics on legal capacity deprivation and restoration in Armenia remain scarce, as the authorities do not maintain comprehensive data. Court records suggest, however, that while hundreds of people are deprived of legal capacity each year, only a handful of restoration cases are recorded.

‘I love being alone’

Shortly after regaining her legal capacity, Gayane sold an apartment that had been left to her — it had required extensive renovations she could not afford. Instead, she purchased a smaller, but already refurbished apartment in Yerevan.

The apartment was modest but comfortable: a small kitchen, a functioning bathroom, a compact bedroom with a mirror and wardrobe, and basic appliances, including a refrigerator, washing machine, kettle, and television.

Gayane greeted me at her home with a warm smile. After decades of institutional life, she was proud to welcome a guest into someplace that was finally her own.

She spoke openly about her daily life, describing how she spent her time, her efforts to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances, and her recent shopping trips. She proudly showed me the electric heater she had bought for the winter, as well as a coat, jeans, and a bra she had recently purchased.

‘It’s not a big thing, right?’, she questioned, as if seeking reassurance that her expenses were reasonable.

Having been deprived of many opportunities throughout her life, Gayane has tried to make up for lost time. She attended operas, theatre performances, and concerts, still amazed by experiences that had once seemed inaccessible.

At times, however, our conversation felt less like an exchange between equals and more like a report. It seemed that Gayane was seeking reassurance — that she was managing well, that her home was clean enough, that she had made the right decisions.

Her relatives had criticised her decision to sell her previous apartment, and while she acknowledged her new home was small, it gave her something she deeply valued: privacy.

‘I love being alone’, she said. In the group home where she previously lived, there had been constant noise and no personal space.

Yet independence also brought financial pressures. Eventually, Gayane had to sell that apartment and buy an even smaller one outside Yerevan. She is now adapting to her new town and home, re-building a sense of community and forming connections with her neighbours.

Why legal capacity requires support

Prolonged institutionalisation can have profound and lasting effects. Years spent in segregated settings often deprive people of opportunities to build and sustain meaningful social relationships, participate in community life, and develop ordinary life skills that most people acquire through daily experience.

Institutional routines can also undermine confidence and autonomy. After years of having decisions made for them, many people leaving institutions face significant barriers in managing housing, finances, health care, employment, or personal relationships, especially when adequate community-based support is unavailable.

Effective de-institutionalisation requires more than relocating people into community settings; it also requires legal and social systems that allow people to genuinely exercise autonomy and live independently in the community.

International human rights law recognises that people with disabilities have the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others. Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires countries not only to recognise this right but also to provide access to the support necessary to exercise it, along with safeguards that respect their rights, will, and preferences.

International law is clear: restoring legal capacity is only the first step. Governments need to ensure that people have the support necessary to exercise it.

Support may take many forms, from informal assistance to formal legal arrangements, and can vary in type and intensity depending on a person’s needs and preferences.

Some countries have begun to develop legal frameworks to implement these principles. In 2024, Mexico City reformed its civil code to recognise full legal capacity for all adults. Under the law, individuals may designate trusted people to assist them in exercising their legal capacity, while retaining ultimate authority over their own decisions.

In Armenia, however, such mechanisms remain absent.

Armenian law does not provide supported decision-making mechanisms or adequate safeguards for people who may need assistance with managing property and finances, accessing social benefits, or making decisions about daily life, including employment, education, and rebuilding a sense of safety and belonging in the community after years of institutionalisation.

At the same time, however, Armenia has taken several recent steps to strengthen the protection of disability rights. In May 2021, the Armenian Parliament adopted a law on the rights of persons with disabilities, which prohibits disability-based discrimination and guarantees accessibility and the right to independent living. A government programme adopted in August that year aimed to eliminate discrimination across all areas of life, support independent living outside institutions, and expand community-based services.

Further steps followed. In August 2022, the government adopted regulations on personal assistant services and reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, and in December that year, Armenia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

However, these measures remain limited. The personal assistant service excludes children under 15 and people who are not in education or working and restricts the number of hours of assistance available. These limitations create significant barriers for many people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, particularly those transitioning from institutional settings to independent living.

Most of us take for granted that we can make decisions for ourselves while relying on support systems that help us manage finances, sign contracts, navigate bureaucracy, and cope with periods of heightened emotional and psychological distress.

For Gayane and many others with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities, such support is simply absent, and without it, independence can become overwhelming.

When Gayane decided to sell her apartment, for example, she had no structured support or procedural accommodations. She also received no assistance in navigating bureaucratic processes, including arranging for social benefits to which she is entitled.

This gap becomes even more evident in challenging situations. When Gayane’s mental health deteriorated, she tried to cope alone. Friends and members of a disability rights organisation eventually intervened to support her. But before help arrived, some of her belongings — including a newly purchased computer, kettle, and iron — disappeared from her apartment.

At the same time, asking for support remains difficult for Gayane. She remains cautious about seeking assistance, fearing that it could turn into another form of control or reinforce the label of incapacity that had been attached to her for so long. Instead, she relies largely on personal relationships that she has managed to maintain or rebuild over time. But this informal support is not structured or safeguarded, and it does not necessarily protect her rights, will, and preferences.

Gayane’s story shows both what is possible and what remains unfinished.

After nearly three decades in institutions, she regained the right to decide how to live her life. Without adequate support, however, that right remains fragile and stronger in theory than practice. Worse, the risk of renewed deprivation of legal capacity or even re-institutionalisation, persists.

Ensuring that people like Gayane can exercise that right safely, confidently, and with dignity requires Armenia to build the support systems that make independent living and legal capacity a genuine reality.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of OC Media’s editorial board.

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