If you have an intellectual disability and need residential support in Prague, there’s an big chance you won’t be living in Prague at all.
You’ll be sent to live in one of eleven institutions scattered across the country – several of them former castles or army barracks chosen decades ago because the buildings happened to be available, not because anyone thought they were the right place to build a life. Some more than two hours away by car, and over four hours by public transport.
This week, Inclusion Europe, together with Inclusion Czech Republic and the Forum for Human Rights, filed a collective complaint against Czechia with the Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights – the body that decides whether countries are living up to the European Social Charter, one of Europe’s core human rights treaties.
Our complaint argues that Czechia has let Prague build its entire social care system around sending people away, instead of supporting them to stay.
A system built in the 1950s that barely changed since
The story behind this starts in Communist Czechoslovakia. Prague didn’t have suitable buildings for what was then called “care” for people with intellectual disabilities, so it began operating institutions outside its own borders — in repurposed castles, schools and villages, often in the Sudetenland, emptied after the deportation of German residents at the end of the war. Eleven of these institutions still exist today, run by Prague, in five different regions of the country.
Between 2007 and 2025 – eighteen years, spanning the country’s 2006 social services reform and its ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – the number of places in these institutions fell by just 141, from 1,147 to 1,006. That’s still around 80% of all the residential care Prague provides its own citizens with disabilities. Inside Prague itself, there are only 270 such places.
Moment of hope, then a reversal
Between 2019 and 2022, Prague’s leadership at the time did try to change course. One institution, in Svojšice, was closed. Capacity was reduced at another, in Terezín. Community-based support inside Prague began to grow.
Then came the 2022 regional elections, and the new administration dropped the plan. By 2023, Prague was moving in the opposite direction – including a proposal to build a brand-new facility on the grounds of an existing institution in Krásná Lípa, near the German border, hours from the city. The plan only fell through after public criticism and pressure from disability organisations.
“People with intellectual disabilities and their family members should have access to a sufficient offer of community-based social services where they live,” said Camille Latimier, Director of Inclusion Czech Republic. “It is unacceptable that the demand for community services that enable people with disabilities to live with dignity is still not being met.”
A March 2026 statement from the Czech Deputy Ombudsperson reached a similar conclusion to ours: Prague has failed to build enough care within its own borders, and the resulting distance cuts people off from family, friends and ordinary life. As he put it, “historical circumstances can be changed” – they cannot be used, forever, to justify leaving things as they are.
What we’re asking for
Right now, Czech law has no real way to describe what’s happening here as discrimination – which means people affected by it have no effective way to challenge it. Our complaint asks the Committee to recognise that sending people away like this is a form of segregation, and to require Czechia to:
give people a real legal way to challenge this kind of segregation
set out concrete, time-bound plans to close the institutions affected
build the community-based support inside Prague that would let people stay close to the people they love, instead of being sent away because nothing else exists
“Segregation on the basis of someone’s disability is not only about placing people behind the walls of an institution. It is also about how care and support systems separate people from the places, relationships and communities that make up their lives,” said Maroš Matiaško, senior legal counsel at the Forum for Human Rights. “In Prague, two forms of segregation reinforce each other. People with intellectual disabilities are placed in institutions and, at the same time, removed from their home city, often many hours away from their families. Czech law still fails to recognise segregation for what it is. Our complaint seeks to change that.”
“The way Prague treats its citizens with intellectual disabilities is unsustainable and must end,” said Milan Šveřepa, Chief Executive of Inclusion Europe. “Segregating people in large institutions away from their families harms their social lives and puts them at risk of neglect and abuse. Czechia must end segregation of people with intellectual disabilities – whether they are from Prague or anywhere else in the country.”
What happens next
The European Committee of Social Rights will first decide whether the complaint can go forward, then examine it in full, with both sides submitting their arguments. Its findings go to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, which issues the final word on the case.
It’s a long road. But it’s the road that led, eventually, to real change in other countries where Inclusion Europe and its members have brought similar complaints. People with intellectual disabilities from Prague deserve the same thing everyone else in the city already has: the ability to live near the people they love.
Together, for full rights and inclusion.
Full text of the collective complaint: Inclusion Europoe v. Czech Republic (PDF)