COVID-19 and Older Persons—In Need of a Comprehensive Human Rights Approach

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 crisis has had a severe and disproportionate impact on older persons—due both to the effects of the virus itself and to the effects of the measures adopted to counter its spread, including some of those specifically designed to ensure better protection of the elderly. This impact has not gone unnoticed but most of the reports and statements that pertain to it either simply describe what has happened or explain the situation by pointing to the natural frailty of older persons and the unprecedented nature of the emergency. This article argues that such an explanation is incomplete. The problems that older persons have experienced in the recent months are neither natural nor coincidental. They reflect certain gaps that have existed in the protection of the human rights of older persons for a long time and that the current crisis has solely made more acute and more visible. The article introduces these gaps (normative, implementation, monitoring, institutional, information and societal gaps) and shows that they are all closely interrelated. To improve the protection of the human rights of older persons during COVID-19 and beyond, it is necessary to address all these gaps simultaneously. This, moreover, may not be done by legal means only. Other, non-legal means must be put in place as well. A comprehensive approach to the human rights of older persons should therefore replace the non-comprehensive approach that has prevailed so far.