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.

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.

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.

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.

In this book, John P. Pace provides the most complete account to-date of the United Nations human rights programme, both in substance and in chronological breadth. Pace worked at the heart of this programme for over thirty years, including as the Secretary of the Commission on Human Rights, and Coordinator of the World Conference on Human Rights, which took place in Vienna in 1993. He traces the issues taken up by the Commission after its launch in 1946, and the methods undertaken to enhance absorption and domestication of international human rights standards. He lays out the special procedures carried out by the UN, and the emergence of international human rights law. The book then turns to the establishment of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the mainstreaming of human rights across the United Nations system, eventually leading to the establishment of the Human Rights Council to replace the Commission in 2006. Many of the problems we face today, including conflict, poverty, and environmental issues, have their roots in human rights problems. This book identifies what has been done at the international level in the past, and points towards what still needs to be done for the future.

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 focuses on China’s evolution in the field of human rights protection, highlighting its achievements in various systems of human rights protection, as well as its role in international human rights governance and the healthy development of human rights. From the perspective of China’s human rights protection, starting with various types of citizens, e.g. women, children and the disabled, the book analyzes and discusses the changes and major events in the country’s human rights development path one by one, while also explaining the Chinese stance on human rights development. China is becoming more active in the international human rights cooperation field, playing its unique and constructive role and serving as the participant, builder and contributor of the international human rights governance.

In an era where the population is rapidly ageing, this timely Research Handbook addresses the wide-ranging social and legal issues concerning older people.

The collection of chapters contained in this book originates from the first Raoul Wallenberg Institute Regional Africa Academic Network Conference held at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe in October 2022. The main aim of this book is to advance an understanding of the way Africa regional and sub-regional human rights systems contribute to access to justice on the continent and to generate further knowledge about the institutions that make up the African human rights adjudication system, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and sub-regional courts, such as the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice.