Social Structures
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning Institute (ALL), Research Funded through the Science Foundation of Ireland (SFI) Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies (ADVANCE CRT)
‘The disability convention should accelerate the trend underway in most corners of the world toward respecting and advancing the rights of persons with disabilities. It will reinforce reform efforts underway in many countries. It will help put in place a dynamic of reform in those countries that have yet to begin a serious reform effort’ (Quinn, as cited in Quinn and Waddington ed., 2009, p. 114).
The above quote from Quinn and Waddington was made in the aftermath of the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD/Convention) in 2008. Their prediction proved to be correct as the CRPD provided a global framework for the advancement of human rights for and by, persons with disabilities, and helped to bolster existing frameworks for legal and policy reform efforts. It also helped to usher in new multilateral initiatives and strategic programmes to tackle disability discrimination and was intended to foster inclusion and human rights for all people irrespective of age or disability status. Whilst its implementation is still very much a work in progress, the CRPD proved to be a pivotal legal and policy instrument of international law by highlighting the discriminatory and inaccessible nature of modern society, thus raising the question of a need for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older People. On 1st October, the UN International Day of Older Persons, this proposed convention is worthy of serious discussion and renewed consideration.
Despite the growth and reform of international disability law and policy in recent decades, and the adoption of the UN Principles for Older Persons in 1991, older adults have continued to face ageism and ableism, as well as forms of intersectional discrimination in a digitalising society in the 2020s. Even as communal attitudes towards disability gravitate slowly towards the ‘social model’, there is a distinct delay in this type of attitudinal shift towards old age. Furthermore, participants at a UN Human Rights Council consultation in 2013 found that numerous human rights issues pertaining to older adults have, “not been given sufficient attention either in the wording of existing human rights instruments or in the practice of human rights bodies and mechanisms”.
From the 2000s, the mainstreaming of disability rights in social policy amidst the digital revolution slowly gained traction, however, the medical model of socio-cognitive precepts towards old age, coupled with stigmatic views of older adults in a high-tech society, has arguably been exacerbated in the interim through the digital-divide. To this end, older adults have enjoyed only minimal benefit from the positive and transformative effects of the CRPD. Moreover, since the adoption of the Convention, older adults have, in many instances, arguably experienced an intensification of traditional forms of ageism. Indeed, the digitalisation process has seen uneven efforts from government and private sector actors to promote equitable digital accessibility and inclusion across age demographics in society, with many initiatives being primarily youth-oriented.
In some instances, discourses of political economy or other non-person-centred precepts have given rise to a view that an older person cannot really have a disability, but that instead they are perceived as being simply just ‘old’, and that any physical impairment or health problem is simply synonymous with being alive in later life and therefore is unworthy of much consideration. This reveals an apparent and urgent need for a stand-alone companion to the CRPD in the form of the proposed UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. It also underscores the theory that ageism can embed itself in social disability discourses where political economy, digitalisation and youth-oriented employment become the drivers of policy, with old age failing to achieve adequate mention to penetrate decision-making processes or the socio-cognitive precepts of later life as an indispensable element of an inclusive digital society.
Older adults deserve a stand-alone multilateral legal instrument that would wield the same power as the CRPD and reinforce existing rights whilst extending specific legal protections to people in old age. As such, a Convention on the Rights of Older Persons, which has been proposed and lobbied for by civil society groups and advocates, may help to promote a paradigm shift similar to that of the CRPD and would likely bring to attention the neglect, intersectional discrimination and even abuses, that many older adults face. The Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing, (OEWGA), established by the UN General Assembly in 2010 has discussed a possible convention since 2011, but the progress of these talks appears to have been slow and to have achieved little in the way of tangible change.
De Búrca noted in 2010 that, prior to the negotiation of the CRPD, many EU Member States such as the Netherlands were sceptical over the need for a Convention at all, and they took the line that an adequate standard of universal human rights protection already existed within the EU. A similar situation arguably now exists amidst the challenges posed by a rapid digitalisation of society with increasingly ageing demographics, where it is becoming irrefutably apparent that a stand-alone Convention on the Rights of Older Persons is necessary to extend human rights and legal protections to people in later life. Unfortunately, there is a considerable degree of scepticism over the need for such a convention. Indeed, many NGOs, advocates and researchers work to strongly emphasise that disability rights are not an age-specific concept but are, rather, an all-encompassing measure to protect the human rights and dignity of all persons, at any age. In any case, considering the achievements stemming from the CRPD, it is hard to refute the potential for a new instrument to bring about unprecedented positive change for older adults.
Additionally, for this proposed novel instrument to truly benefit older adults, stakeholders must keep in mind and reiterate the ‘nothing about us without us’ approach which guided the drafting of the CRPD. Indeed, De Búrca also emphasised that a very important feature of the negotiation phase of the CRPD was that persons with disabilities themselves assumed a central role in contributing to the formulation and direction of this Convention, particularly through the medium of civil society. This aspect of the CRPD was, and remains, essential to enable discourse creation and empower the disability community, who also has a paramount and vested interest in the manner in which the Convention is implemented. Similarly, persons in later life must be empowered and included in the creation of new discourses, narratives, laws and policies that protect their human rights and liberties. Furthermore, they must be empowered to assume a direct, leading and integral role in the monitoring and implementation of such a novel legal instrument. As the 33rd commemoration of the United Nations International Day of Older Persons focused on “Fulfilling the Promises of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for Older Persons: Across Generations”, a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons would undeniably represent an indispensable step towards the realisation of this goal.