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CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ TOWARDS A NEW CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTON OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS
organizations and to scholarly literature. The choice and combination of the two
words – older and persons – is conscious and intentional. Using the comparative
(older) rather than the basic form (old) or the superlative (oldest) should indicate
the relativity of the concept which remains open to reinterpretation(s). Speaking
about persons rather than people or individuals is useful in that it “recalls the inherent
personhood of every individual, reminds us that everyone has worth regardless of age, and
that aging does not someone de-value a person”.22 Combining the two terms should
allow to draw attention to various challenges that people might face due to their old
age, without reifying either a specific understanding of who older persons are or the
characteristics that they are supposed to have.
These characteristics are in fact not fixed either. As mentioned above, older persons
may be, and are, portrayed both in positive and in negative light. The positive images
relate to life experience, accumulated wisdom and the preservation of traditions. The
negatives images focus on weakness, conservativism or incapacity to keep pace with
new developments. There is also no agreement as to whether older persons exhibit
group-based vulnerability or not. As UN Secretary General Pan Ki-Moon stressed in
his 2009 follow-up report to the Second World Assembly on Ageing, “older persons
are a heterogeneous group, encompassing both people who are major contributors to the
development of society, as well as those who are in need of care and support”.23 Indeed,
older persons occupy very diverse positions in any society. Some are in positions of
power, exercising control over the lives of others. Most heads of States, high court
judges, or directors of public or private institutions would quite likely fall under
the UN definition of older persons (those aged 60 and above). Other older people may
live disempowered, socially excluded and exposed to poverty and disdain.24 Still other
older persons, most probably the vast majority of them, find themselves somewhere
between these two extremes.
Yet, if this is so, it is legitimate to ask whether older persons constitute a group
and whether this group could be deemed particularly vulnerable so as to require special
human rights protection. Do older people – to go back to the understanding of group-
based vulnerability introduced by Peroni and Timmer – suffer harm stemming from
negative social stereotypes directed against them? And are they regularly excluded from
social interactions (misrecognition) and do they face destitution (maldistribution)?
22 Ibid.
23 UN Doc. A/64/127, Follow-up to the Second World Assembly on Ageing, Report of the Secretary-General,
6 July 2009, par. 6.
24 Data collected within the EU and the UN coincidently demonstrate that older persons run a higher
risk of being subject to extreme poverty. See Eurostat, People at risk of poverty or social exclusion, online at
exclusion (retrieved on 12 July 2016); and UN Doc. A/HRC/14/31, Report of the independent expert
on the question of human rights and extreme poverty, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, 31 March 2010
(especially Section 2: Poverty and Old Age, par. 8-25).