Archive for the ‘elderly’ Category
How is the disease in 2011 elderly?
Argentina has been this week at the head of the Working Group of the United Nations to begin preparing a Convention on the Rights of the Elderly, one of the outstanding achievements that are more sensitive to international human rights system in its remarkable evolution recent decades.
The Working Group was created for three months by the UN General Assembly, open to all members and with the intention of enhancing the promotion and protection of human rights of this social group of impressive growth in recent decades and clearly need of new legal instruments, including a specific Convention.
The G77 + China, the main group of developing countries, which presides over Argentina in 2011, was one of the most important drivers of this Working Group, but our country also has antecedents in this effort.
During the Third Session of the UN, in 1948, adopted a landmark Declaration on the Rights of the Elderly, an initiative of Eva Peron.
The need for a legally binding instrument to protect and promote the rights of these people, to establish mechanisms and international agencies providing them, has a quantitative dimension is striking and calls for reflection.
In 1948, when it adopted the International Convention on Human Rights, which gave much later to other specific such as children, or Discrimination against Women, the world population was one third of the current. In addition, since then, the average life expectancy increased in 20 years, from 46 in 1967 to 67 in 2010.
Nobody can tell yaw that aging is just a concern of a few developed countries and Latin America is an example. In 2007, more than 9% of Latin Americans were over 60 years. In addition, by 2050 the proportion of elderly people in our countries nearly quadrupled if the current trend is maintained.
Repeated media image of needs associated almost exclusively with children and their mothers around the world cannot hide similar situations and worse for the elderly, the most vulnerable people for whom poverty can be understood because of the denial of their rights, but also as their own cause.
Situations such as the lack of lower revenues from the mere fact of being older, access to basic health services and housing is universal, and discrimination against women in inheritance from their partners and / or children will also print a woman’s face situations of exclusion that may be as a result of the denial of rights but at the same time as their own cause.
The Working Group now chaired Argentina seeks to close a gap between those rights and the reality that should be fully guaranteed, so articulate at a convention in the rules that follow and in public policy principles that inspire basic human rights as non-discrimination of our seniors.
Until now, the situation of older adults is considered only indirectly, through the Migrant Workers Convention and the more recent Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2008, in which civil society, through organizations activists and volunteers, confirmed its historic role as a key player in developing a rights agenda and pursue it with the Member States of the UN, a process that surely now be republished.
Some UN committees, such as the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, developed specific recommendations for elders, but it is recognized fragmentation and lack of focus on the situation of this group age.
Argentina, chairing the Working Group began its road to a longed Convention inspired by the idea that human rights have been and should continue to be seen as tools for social change.