Today is the United Nations Human Rights Day, marking the 66th anniversary of the adoption of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and this year the theme is Human Rights 365.
While UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon has highlighted the fundamental premise that every individual, everywhere, around the clock and regardless of gender, class, sexual orientation or opinion, is entitled to the full range of human rights, the day is a good opportunity to remember that older citizens have rights too.
Many older people encounter intolerance, discrimination and abuse based purely on matters pertaining to their age on a regular basis, including those in Australia.
Abuse can take many forms and isn’t restricted to coming from strangers.
Hospital and healthcare workers are sometimes quick to judge, neglecting or ignoring the needs of older people simply because they are old. Stories about families financially abusing their senior members are common too.
HelpAge International chief executive Toby Porter said that discrimination against men and women based on their age is “one of the last remaining forms of prejudice to be tackled on a global basis”.
“This has to change and a new UN convention on the rights of older people is the way to challenge age discrimination,” Mr Porter said.
“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 said.
“Age discrimination must stop.”
Age Demands Action campaigner Margaret Kabango, 71 from Uganda, 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 said.
“We need to be given time to get onto a bus, get into a car, and learn how to cope with things like diabetes.”
Along with others from Age Demands Action, Margaret 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.
HelpAge International’s senior policy adviser Bridget Sleap said that existing human rights standards have failed to protect older peoples’ rights and a UN convention is necessary to make changes.
“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 said.
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