Internationally thinking around human rights is changing. Now, we are seeing more conversations happening looking at how older people’s rights are included in human rights legislation.

We were pleased to see that HelpAge International wrote recently that although we are now celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this declaration does not refer to the age discrimination that older people experience wordwide. As a result, older people’s human rights are invisible in international human rights law, national law and in our day-to-day lives.

Having organisations like HelpAge International pushing the issue of recognising that older people’s rights are human rights is an important step as we look to making life better for older people. Most of us know that older people can experience discrimination simply for being older, and yet older people are often left out of conversations on human rights. For more information you can watch HelpAge and UNDP’s new animation How older people’s human rights are denied. 

Recognising older people’s rights as human rights is the reason behind our Local People Linking project. In the project we are looking at this idea through workshops and by creating a team of volunteer Community Reporters who feed back on great things happening in local communities. The project is taking place in East Renfrewshire and Moray. Would you like to become one of our Community Reporters, or just find out more about the project? Take a look at our Local People Linking page to find out more.