The Human Rights of Older Persons: A Growing Challenge

Abstract

The human rights of older persons is an issue that is beginning to garner international attention, partly as a result of the demographic importance of that population. To assess whether calls for a specific human rights approach to older persons are warranted, the article highlights some of the specificities of older persons as a human group. It contextualises the emergence of a relatively strong discourse on the rights of older persons within the broader phenomenon of the ‘fragmentation’ of human rights. Older persons are a category of humanity whose needs and experience is irreducible enough to warrant fresh thinking and an updating of existing instruments and approaches. This is particularly apparent when one looks at the potential for violation of specific rights and the way in which older persons’ lives can be negatively impacted upon by both limitations to their freedoms and failures to cater for their needs.