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INTER-AMERICAN CONVENTION WILL HELP PROTECT LATIN AMERICA’S ELDERLY - WOMEN
OAS – Organization of American States – Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons
HelpAge International - http://www.helpage.org/where-we-work/latin-america/
By 2050, 30% of the population of Latin America will be aged 60 or over, and the majority will be older women.
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http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/07/new-convention-will-help-protect-latin-americas-elderly/
NEW CONVENTION WILL HELP PROTECT LATIN AMERICA’S ELDERLY – WOMEN
Latin
America’s population is ageing, which poses social and economic challenges, for
which there is a new Convention. In the photo, older adults gathered in the
town of Cuautitlán-Izcalli, to the north of the Mexican capital, to receive
information about economic support for this segment of the population. Credit:
Courtesy of the city government of Cuautitlán-Izcalli
MEXICO CITY, Jul 17 2015 (IPS) - “Our
rights are only partially respected; in some places we are given special
attention, but in others it is quite the opposite. There is a lack of education
and respect for people my age,” Hilda Téllez, a 70-year-old Mexican woman, told
IPS.
A
few hours earlier, a taxi driver had refused to carry her wheelchair, in the
middle-class neighbourhood of Villa Olímpica, where Téllez lives. She said she
suffers double discrimination: as an elderly person and as someone with a
disability, since she suffered a stroke that affected the right side of her
body.
“When
I got sick, they violated my rights, because I collapsed in the office due to
the level of stress there,” she said. “I didn’t go back to work after that. But
the doctors ruled that it wasn’t a work-related health problem,” said the
divorced mother of three and grandmother of eight, who worked for over 15 years
in Mexico’s public prosecutor’s office, until retiring in 2006.
Because
of that, she now receives a pension of only 225 dollars a month, even though
her salary when she retired was over 1,250 dollars.
Discrimination,
abandonment or neglect by families, and lack of care, work opportunities and
full access to social services are all problems faced by people over 60 in
Latin America and the Caribbean.
To address this situation, the Inter-American Convention on
Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons was approved Jun. 15 by the
Organisation of American States (OAS) members. It needs to be ratified by two
countries to go into effect, and has already been signed by Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay.
The Convention is the first regional instrument for promoting,
protecting and recognising the human rights of the elderly.
It
creates a comprehensive system of care for older adults, a Conference of the
Parties, and a committee of experts who will issue recommendations to states.
It
also creates a channel for any individual, group or non-governmental
organisation to file complaints with the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights against an OAS member country for violating the Convention.
There
are currently 71 million people over 60 in Latin America. And by 2040, the
elderly will outnumber children, according to an international forum held in this capital on the human
rights of older adults by the Latin American
and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE).
Sandra
Huenchúan, a CELADE expert on ageing, said the main challenges involve
improving social security coverage, access to healthcare, and inclusion in the
labour market, and carrying out studies on the rights of the elderly.
“There
are often problems applying the legislation – a lack of institutional or
jurisdictional guarantees that would make enforcement possible,” Huenchúan
said.
She
added that “there is an enormous range of areas where older adults are
unprotected, despite the existence of standardised legal mechanisms. Society
isn’t fully aware that older adults have rights.”
The
countries in Latin America that already have specific laws and regulations for
the protection of the rights of older adults are Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.
María
Isolina Dabove, an expert from Argentina, said “The region is facing
multigenerational ageing, a complex phenomenon that emerged with the
demographic changes of the second half of the 20th century and is fuelled by
the rise in life expectancy, which makes it possible for several generations to
coexist.”
Dabove,
with the Argentine government’s National Scientific and Technical Research
Council (CONICET), told IPS that the Convention is “the first explicit
acknowledgement” by the region of the specific problems of older adults.
“This
is an instrument that will guarantee the enforcement of the rights of all older
adults,” she said.
Between
1950 and 2010, life expectancy at birth in the region climbed from 51 to 75
years, and it is expected to rise to 81 by the mid-21st century, according to CELADE, the population division of the United
Nations Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
One
illustration is what is happening in Argentina, where 14 million of the
country’s roughly 40 million inhabitants are over 60, according to the 2012 National Survey on the Quality of Life of Older Adults, while
one out of five people in Argentina will be over 65 by 2050.
In
Mexico, with a population f 120 million, seven million people are over 65 – a
number that is expected to soar to more than 30 million by 2050.
And
in Brazil, the most populous country in the region, with 200 million people,
the number of people over 60 is expected to increase from 10 million today to
more than 16 million by 2025 and to 29 million by 2050, according to official
statistics.
“The
real, concrete impact of the new Inter-American Convention is that each one of
the states must incorporate it into their domestic laws. The Convention should
have the legal hierarchy that would make it possible to build a free and equal
society for all ages,” said Dabove.
Téllez,
who receives medical care in the Social Security and Services Institute of
Workers of the State, said she would like special clinics so the care would be
“faster and more efficient.” She also suggested that the clinics could employ
older adults.
“The
government could make things accessible, approve stricter laws, provide driver
education, improve the treatment we receive, and apply heavy fines, to educate
people,” the pensioner said.
The
region could benefit from the so-called “demographic bonus” – a broad segment
of young people of an age to study and work and contribute to economic growth –
but that advantage can vanish without investment in the human development of
this part of the population.
In
the November 2014 report “The New Demographic Era in Latin America and the Caribbean: Time for
Equality According to the Population Clock”, CELADE said the
demographic bonus could be secured with investment in education and health,
particularly for children, adolescents, young people and women.
“Ageing
should be a concern for the states, because it not only affects social welfare
systems but also the life of the community and the development of countries,
and its effects should be anticipated,” Huenchúan said.
That
concern, she added, “should not only translate into caring for older adults,
but in making sure they have better conditions to exercise their rights."