On Human Rights Day this year (10 December), HelpAge International is calling for governments to challenge the wide range of human rights violations experienced every day by many older women and men.
“Discrimination against men and women on account of their older age is one of the last remaining forms of prejudice to be tackled on a global basis,” says Toby Porter, chief executive at HelpAge International. “This has to change and a new UN convention on the rights of older people is the way to challenge age discrimination.
“International human rights conventions prohibit and make discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, migrant worker status and being a child, both morally and legally unacceptable. The same cannot be said for discrimination on the basis of older age,” he adds. “Age discrimination must stop.”
Margaret Kabango, 71, a campaigner from Uganda with Age Demands Action, a growing movement fighting for a fairer world for older people in over 60 countries, provided examples of discrimination.
“Older people are accused of being witches, we get pushed aside in queues and we often don’t get the health treatment we need because we’re told that the symptoms are just a sign of old age,” she says.
Margaret, along with others from Age Demands Action, will be writing to governments asking them to make concrete proposals on how to better protect older people’s rights, at the next session of the UN Open-ended Working Group on Ageing, set up to explore how to better protect older people’s rights. These government proposals will be presented to the UN General Assembly next September.
“Existing human rights standards and mechanisms have failed to protect people’s rights in older age and a new UN convention on the rights of older people is necessary to rectify this,” says Bridget Sleap, senior rights policy adviser at HelpAge International.
“We are at a critical point in the process towards such a convention. Now is the time for governments to outline what the content of a new convention should be,” she says.
This year’s slogan, “Human Rights 365”, encompasses the idea that every day is Human Rights Day.