Set against the rapid aging of the world's population, Human Rights and the Care of Older People explores the potential for the rule against torture and ill-treatment in international human rights law to better protect older people from care-related mistreatment. The book's analysis is broadly relevant but is prompted by the widespread reports of older people's suffering due to lack of access to care and coercion in respect of care needs. This includes the deprivation of liberty for 'care'. While recognizing that a new United Nations Convention on the rights of older people is on the horizon, the book argues that there is a pressing need for older people and all human rights actors to use and progressively interpret the established right to freedom from torture and ill-treatment. As an interpretive lens, the book offers a conception of a dignity violation that may amount to prohibited ill-treatment and thus trigger states' positive obligations to protect, including through systemic prevention measures. This book is intended as a tool for advocacy and a call for critical awareness, highlighting the anti-torture norm's potential for more effective application and challenging current legal barriers to such effectiveness. Meant for readers worldwide, the book addresses the rule against torture and ill-treatment from international law, regional European, Inter-American, and African perspectives. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Looks at how the principles of human rights can be applied to older people in hospitals and care homes to ensure they are treated with greater dignity and respect. This report covers the leadership of the Department of Health; the implementation of the Human Rights Act by service providers.

This book focuses on descriptions of the developments in legal frameworks and policies regarding the human rights of older persons. First, it covers the policies adopted and practices developed at the universal system, particularly within the sphere of the United Nations. Second, it includes a side-by-side comparison of the work of regional human rights mechanisms, which have picked up some momentum in the past decade. Through its inclusion of law, policy, and current processes, the widest net possible has been cast to collect a descriptive resource for advocates. Overall, we hope that this book contributes to a better understanding of the current limitations and possibilities that international institutions offer to uphold the human rights of older persons. We expect that this information will allow states and other policy makers to move forward with the international recognition of the human rights of older persons. We know this is only a first effort in compiling and reporting the standards that are being produced by different international institutions. But we have no doubt that many others will follow with their expert analysis of these emerging standards, and that the ongoing discussion will finally crystalize in international human rights binding instruments explicitly recognizing the universal rights of older persons.

This book provides a comprehensive human rights analysis of key areas of law affecting older persons, including legal capacity; elder abuse; accommodation and aged care; healthcare; employment; financial security, retirement, and estate planning; and social and cultural participation. The research identifies individual autonomy and participation in decision-making as fundamental to a human rights-based approach to elder law. The book argues that a paradigm shift must occur away from traditional medical and charity-based understandings of ‘old age’ to instead acknowledge older persons as active holders of enforceable rights. The book argues that a Convention on the Rights of Older Persons is an essential tool in achieving this, but that even without a dedicated treaty there is much to be gained from a human rights-based approach. Significantly, because the issues arising in ‘old age’ are often the culmination of experiences occurring throughout the life course, a human rights-based approach to elder law must begin with a commitment to human rights for people of all ages.

Mental disorders are ubiquitous, profoundly disabling and people suffering from them frequently endure the worst conditions of life. In recent decades both mental health and human rights have emerged as areas of practice, inquiry, national policy-making and shared international concern. Human-rights monitoring and reporting are core features of public administration in most countries, and human rights law has burgeoned. Mental health also enjoys a new dignity in scholarship, international discussions and programs, mass-media coverage and political debate. Today's experts insist that it impacts on every aspect of health and human well-being, and so becomes essential to achieving human rights. It is remarkable however that the struggle for human rights over the past two centuries largely bypassed the plight of those with mental disabilities. Mental health is frequently absent from routine health and social policy-making and research, and from many global health initiatives, for example, the Millenium Development Goals. Yet the impact of mental disorder is profound, not least when combined with poverty, mass trauma and social disruption, as in many poorer countries. Stigma is widespread and mental disorders frequently go unnoticed and untreated. Even in settings where mental health has attracted attention and services have undergone reform, resources are typically scarce, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently deployed. Social inclusion of those with psychosocial disabilities languishes as a distant ideal. In practice, therefore, the international community still tends to prioritise human rights while largely ignoring mental health, which remains in the shadow of physical-health programs. Yet not only do persons with mental disorders suffer deprivations of human rights but violations of human rights are now recognized as a major cause of mental disorder - a pattern that indicates how inextricably linked are the two domains. This volume offers the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of the key aspects of this interrelationship. It examines the crucial relationships and histories of mental health and human rights, and their interconnections with law, culture, ethnicity, class, economics, neuro-biology, and stigma. It investigates the responsibilities of states in securing the rights of those with mental disabilities, the predicaments of vulnerable groups, and the challenge of promoting and protecting mental health. In this wide-ranging analysis, many themes recur - for example, the enormous mental health burdens caused by war and social conflicts; the need to include mental-health interventions in humanitarian programs in a manner that does not undermine traditional healing and recovery processes of indigenous peoples; and the imperative to reduce gender-based violence and inequities. It particularly focuses on the first-person narratives of mental-health consumers, their families and carers, the collective voices that invite a major shift in vision and praxis. The book will be valuable for mental-health and helping professionals, lawyers, philosophers, human-rights workers and their organisations, the UN and other international agencies, social scientists, representatives of government, teachers, religious professionals, researchers, and policy-makers.

People are leading significantly longer lives than previous generations did, and the proportion of older people in the population is growing. Residential care for older people will become increasingly necessary as our society ages and, we will require more of it. At this moment in time, the rights of older people receive attention at international and regional levels, with the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the African Union exploring the possibility of establishing new conventions for the rights of older persons. This book explores the rights of older people and their quality of care once they are living in a care home, and considers how we can commence the journey towards a human rights framework to ensure decent and dignified care for older people. The book takes a comparative approach to present and future challenges facing the care home sector for older people in Africa (Kenya), the Arab world (Egypt), Australia, China, England, Israel, Japan and the USA. An international panel of experts have contributed chapters, identifying how their particular society cares for its older and oldest people, the extent to which demographic and economic change has placed their system under pressure and the role that residential elder care homes play in their culture. The book also explores the extent to which constitutional or other rights form a foundation to the regulatory and legislative structures to residential elder care and it examines the important concept of dignity. As a multi-regional study of the care of older person from a human rights perspective, this book will be of excellent use and interest, in particular to students and researchers of family and welfare law, long-term care, social policy, social work, human rights and elder law.

The mission of the social work profession and the development of social policy are rooted in a set of core values and are the foundation of social work’s unique purpose and perspective. Human rights offer a normative base for social work and for the formation of inclusive social policies. This informative and incisively written edited collection brings together experts from around the world to explore the tension between a normative and a political base of social work and social development and, therefore, to address the question: How can social work and social policies contribute in the endeavor to respect, protect and fulfill human rights? This volume will show that there is no straightforward answer to this question owing to the clash between different sociocultural and local conditions and demands for universal human rights.

This handbook provides a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of the current and emerging research and policy on disability law. Bringing together a team of respected and experienced experts, the handbook offers a range of jurisdictional and multidisciplinary perspectives. The authors consider historical and contemporary, as well as comparative perspectives of disability law. Divided into three parts, the contributors provide a comprehensive reference to the theoretical underpinnings, ongoing debates and emerging fields within the subject. The study provides a strong basis for consideration of contemporary disability law, its research foundations, and progressive developments in the area. The book incorporates interdisciplinary and comparative country perspectives to capture the breadth of current discourse on disability law. This handbook provides a valuable resource for a wide range of scholars, public and private researchers, NGOs, and practitioners working in the area of disability law, and across national and transnational disability schemes. The work will be of important interest to those in the fields of sociology, history, psychology, economics, political science, rehabilitation sciences, medicine, technology, and law, among others.

This book is a collection of narratives and research that explores our understanding of human rights in the contemporary world. The chapters highlight the narrative and experiences of researchers and academics who seek to ensure that human rights are implemented in policies and practices in their communities, their countries, and the global world. The book presents contemporary themes of the United Nations Human Rights in terms of current policies and practices, legislative reform, property rights, liberty, security, and freedom of expression. It also provides a comprehensive understanding of the importance of human rights across a number of fields of study that are very relevant in our contemporary world today.

This book examines the emergence of a human rights culture by considering the issues surrounding the effective implementation of human rights.