Kristijan Grđan Biography

Kristijan Grđan is a human rights activist and independent researcher in the field of legal sciences. He has more than fifteen years of experience in human rights advocacy, academic work, fieldwork, project management and in providing direct support to persons with disabilities and victims of crimes. Kristijan has worked with MHE since 2010 as Board member and chair of MHE’s Human Rights and Mental Health Committee. He devoted most of his career to advocating for the rights of persons with mental health problems.
For more than ten years, he was involved in legislation preparation in Croatia, most notably in relation to the Law on Persons with Mental Health Problems and Family Act. He has published more than twenty professional and scientific papers (legal articles, practical guides, manuals, expert analysis, draft proposals and reports) on human rights issues of vulnerable groups among which a significant number of written papers concerns the rights of people with mental difficulties.
Together with EDF and ENUSP, on behalf of MHE Kristijan has been campaigning against the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo Protocol). He is a member of the National Committee on Protecting Persons with Mental Health Problems, Ministry of Justice of Croatia and is currently Vice-
President of Mental Health Europe. Kristijan is firmly committed to the human rights approach to disability and considers the CRPD the main guiding document in mental health advocacy.
Kristijan continues MHE’s active participation in EDF’s Board and advocates for mainstreaming mental health in EDF’s work with a special emphasis on rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, including all people with disabilities who develop mental health problems, under the UN CRPD social paradigm.