CYIL vol. 10 (2019)

VERONIKA BÍLKOVÁ CYIL 10 ȍ2019Ȏ Older persons are a rather heterogeneous category. As the UN Secretary General Pan Ki- Moon rightly stressed in his 2009 follow-up report to the 2nd World Assembly on Ageing, they “encompass both people who are major contributors to the development of society, as well as those who are in need of care and support”. 2 The age span is also considerable. Provided that some organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), set the threshold for old age for certain regions at 50, the age difference between the youngest older person and the oldest older person may amount to some 50-60 years. What, however, older persons all over the world and across various age groups seem to share is the stigma attached to old age and to the process of ageing. Living longer without getting (or, at least, looking) old has become a new ideal that humanity pursues. Banished to the fringes of our collective self-perception, old age is seen as something undesirable and even shameful. As are those “affected” by old age, especially if they do not do enough to actively resist this scourge. Older persons thus increasingly rank among groups that reveal particular vulnerability. They are subject to negative stereotyping, discrimination, exclusion, and even violence and abuse. Despite that, and unlike other vulnerable groups (children, disabled persons, women, etc.), they do not enjoy any special protection under international human rights law (IHRL), at least at the universal level, and there is no global instrument that would specifically target the problems they face. That, however, does not mean that they would remain fully outside the scope of IHRL. The general instruments, applicable to any human being, apply to them as well, whether these instruments are adopted within the UN or within regional organizations (e.g. Council of Europe). The international regulation complements the regulation that exists at the domestic level and, in Europe, within the European Union system. The aim of this symposium is to introduce these various layers of the legal protection. The focus lies on the material content of the regulation, i.e. the guarantees that it offers to protect older persons against various forms of human rights abuse. The first two contributions, dealing with the UN human rights system and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, take a general approach, offering an overview of human rights issues that arise in, and have been considered by, universal or regional human rights bodies and experts. The third contribution has a narrower scope, discussing the case law of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic on old-age pensions. This first contribution concentrates on the protection of the human rights of older persons within the UN system. The text builds on the article Towards a New Convention for the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons? , which was published in this journal in 2016. 3 The article introduced the concept of older persons, explained the causes for enhanced vulnerability of older persons, and discussed the prospects of a new legal instruments that would deal specifically with the human rights of older persons. Drawing on the 2016 article, this text first describes the legal framework applicable to older persons within the UN system – it gives an overview of the main sources making up this framework and it considers how older persons are, or should be, defined at the universal level. In the subsequent step, the article identifies the main human rights problems faced by older persons, and reveals how these problems are (or are not) addressed in the current regulation. The final section provides 2 UNDoc. A/64/127, Follow-up to the SecondWorld Assembly on Ageing, Report of the Secretary-General, 6 July 2009, par. 6. 3 See BÍLKOVÁ, Veronika, Towards a New Convention for the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons?, Czech Yearbook of Public and Private International Law, Vol. 7, 2016, pp. 173-196.

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