Amnesty International has created a new page on older people’s rights on its website. On this web page, Amnesty argues in favour of a United Nations’ Convention on the rights of older persons as a key step toward protecting rights in old age.
While certain groups are protected by international conventions – including children, women, people with disabilities, and racial and ethnic minorities – older people face discrimination that is not explicitly prohibited by existing laws. A UN convention on the rights of older persons would lay out the areas in which older people are most in need of legal protection, whether it’s abuse or neglect in care homes, discrimination in employment, or lack of adequate pensions.
An international convention would also force state parties to take proactive steps to prevent age discrimination and the abuse of older people and likely lead to an improvement of legal protections at the national level.
On its web page, Amnesty also examines the discriminatory context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It explains that older age is a social construct that changes in given contexts and situations. This is why Amnesty applies a “context-specific approach” to older age when investigating human rights violations.
