Alison A. Hillman, J.D.

Alison A. Hillman is Director of Mental Disability Rights International’s (MDRI) Americas Advocacy Initiative. An attorney with an international human rights background, Hillman designs and implements MDRI’s advocacy support programs, human rights monitoring, and litigation in the Americas. Hillman has led fact-finding missions and advocacy training workshops in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In collaboration with attorneys from the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Hillman presented the first-ever petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights challenging on-going abuses in a psychiatric institution. As part of this petition, Hillman filmed and produced video evidence depicting the abusive treatment and conditions at the state-run psychiatric institution in Asunción, Paraguay. This video, Human Rights Violations in Paraguay’s Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, won a 2005 documentary film award from Canada’s International Disability Film Festival, “Picture this.” In February 2005, Hillman negotiated and signed an historic accord with the Paraguayan government, requiring the country to deinstitutionalize and develop community-integrated services for people with mental disabilities.

Hillman is the lead investigator and primary author of Human Rights & Mental Health in Argentina (forthcoming 2005), a joint report with Human Rights Watch, presenting a legal analysis of the conditions and treatment endured by people with mental disabilities locked inside Argentina’s psychiatric institutions and social care homes. Hillman is also the primary author of Human Rights & Mental Health in Peru (2004), a report documenting abuses against people with mental disabilities in mental health and social services in Peru.

Hillman has lectured about mental health and human rights at the Fifth Course on Mental Health and Development, co-sponsored by Cayetano Heredia University and McGill University, in Lima, Peru, and has served as guest lecturer for Masters Seminars in public health, law, and psychology at Cayetano Heredia University. She has presented findings and recommendations to the Coalition for Human Rights in Health in Peru, and has advised consultants to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on mental health reparations for Peru’s populations affected by the political violence. Hillman has also provided feedback to UN Special Rapporteur for Health, Paul Hunt, on his forthcoming report on Mental Disability and the Right to Health. She has been interviewed about her work by the CBC, the International Press Service, and Peruvian, Brazilian and Paraguayan radio, Canadian Brazilian and Paraguayan television, and has addressed audiences at the Sprout Film Festival at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on mental disability rights and the “Picture this” film festival in Calgary, Canada.

Hillman is a member of the Board of Directors of ENSAAF (meaning JUSTICE), dedicated to enforcing human rights and fighting impunity in India by working with survivors to engage in advocacy and outreach, documenting violations, and creating public awareness about human rights abuses in India.

In 2003, Hillman received the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award as an emerging leader in the disability field. In 2002, she was awarded a New Voices Fellowship through the Academy for Educational Development to direct MDRI’s programming in Latin America. Before joining MDRI, Hillman lived and worked in Latin America on and off for the previous eleven years. In 2000, she received the National Association for Public Interest Law’s Exemplary Public Service Award by a Summer Fellow for her work in the Petén, Guatemala.

Hillman received her law degree cum laude from American University, Washington College of Law in 2002, and her bachelor’s degree with distinction from Cornell University in 1992. Hillman also has a psychiatric disability.