In October 2020 I had the honor to participate in an online Oxford debate alongside Ken Bluestone from Age International on the topic: ‘Age Discrimination: do we need a Human Rights Charter for older people?’. During this debate, both Ken and I busted some of the key arguments against a new international legally binding United Nations convention on the rights of older persons.
These are issues that we, as NGO advocates, have been long thinking about, as we truly believe in the difference that a new convention could make in the lives of older people worldwide. Yet it took a global pandemic for the vast majority of the gerontological community to engage with this topic. The reasons for this neglect are varied and go beyond the scope of this short blog. What I would like to focus on this piece is why and how researchers in the field of ageing can get involved in the discussions around the development of a new international human rights treaty.
I agree with Doron and Meenan, who argued that,
The legal discipline, on its own, lacks the relevant knowledge and empirical evidence to provide the necessary basis for the material legal content of any such future convention. Only a true integrative inter-disciplinary cooperation of legal, gerontological and geriatric knowledge – or, as we propose, the development of ‘geriatric jurisprudence’ knowledge – will enable to fully capture the full scope of the rights of older persons. (p.3)
International law is a dynamic process, which gerontological thinking – alongside legal scholarship and human rights practice - can help define. Gerontology can bring forward conceptions of older age, later life transitions, identity and the lifecourse, as well as the experiences of multifaceted disadvantage faced by older people that are both distinct from other forms of inequality and also intersect with them. These are all central issues to discussion on the conceptualisation and implementation of universal rights in old age.
Gerontology and legal scholars should work together to create a theory of older age that can be integrated in a new treaty. Challenging the view of ageing as inevitable decline and burden, the interplay between gerontology and law should propose a model that defines old age as a social construct and helps describe collective responses to address societal barriers. They should also work together to destigmatize older age without ignoring the lived experience of later life, which may include loss of physical, cognitive and financial resources. Moreover, research evidence can help identify societal patterns that allow older people to grow and prosper. Only if these enabling patterns are known and understood by those who are negotiating international treaties, can a new convention contribute to their widespread realisation.
The call to make linkages between gerontology and law is not new. But a study by Kohn and others demonstrated that, whereas synergies between the two disciplines are seen as desirable and important, in reality these do not happen naturally, nor do they have a wide scope when they do. The same study also suggested that the existing (limited) interaction between the two fields is neither systematic nor formal. The debate around a new treaty creates a window of opportunity for gerontology and law to come together to influence the framing of human rights in older age. Whereas - in their majority- researchers in the field of ageing have not yet been adequately involved in the debate on a new convention and the development of a rights-based approach to ageing, disability scholars have been instrumental in developing a human rights paradigm and several of them were also very much involved in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. If a new treaty were to be adopted, it would form an authoritative understanding of older age that would be integrated in discourse, policy and law. When something becomes hard law, it is difficult to change, so it is particularly important to get this right in the first place. Combined, gerontology and law can not only enrich each other, but also increase the chances of the adoption of a comprehensive document and its subsequent successful implementation.
In coming together gerontology and law could create a new field of ageing studies modelled on women’s and disability studies that aim at ending oppression against disadvantaged groups and are located strategically between scholarship and activism. To achieve this aim, law and gerontology need to engage directly with advocacy groups. Together they need to produce more research that is political and emancipatory.
About the Author
Nena Georgantzi, Policy Coordinator AGE Platform Europe, Research Fellow, National University of Ireland Galway
Nena coordinates policy and advocacy on human rights at AGE Platform Europe, an EU network, which aims to voice and promote the rights of older persons.
Opinions of the blogger is their own and not endorsed by the Institute
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