What Should Guarantee Pensions Systems Designed with a Human Rights Approach?

Abstract

Since “progressive realization and non-retrogression” is one of the principles of Human Rights, their trajectory always inclines towards the expansion of rights. In this light, it is worth inquiring whether the coincidence of social security traditions which arose simultaneously with the first human rights treaties remain valid and suitable for the current period, with treaties produced many decades later. We propose to explore the current implications of approaching social protection, and in particular the elderly social security, from a human rights approach. To that end, we examine how different human rights instruments approached to two main questions: Firstly, how ‘the subject’ of the rights is defined. Secondly, how the right which must be guaranteed is defined and, as a consequence, what are the criteria of distributive justice which must guide the implementation of income transfer systems for older people. As part of the analysis, international instruments are included as well as those of the Inter-American Human Rights system, which are especially relevant for a region experiencing an accelerate ageing process while lacking the social and economic institutions of developed countries. Content analysis of all the human rights instruments related to the elderly economic and social rights are performed. During the twentieth century references to economic security of older persons were consistent with main social security traditions. However, the instruments included statements about social justice, which create internal tensions around the restrictive characteristics that the elderly income protection acquires when it focuses on labour rights. The production of specific documents for rights of older persons sharpens these tensions, inasmuch as the worker as a rights-bearer is undermined, and they are explicitly aimed at the rights and needs of older persons. The human rights-based approach of the twenty-first century reduces the aforementioned tensions by moving towards expanding rights and strengthening the principles of equity in social policies. These findings showed that adopting a human rights approach today does not fully align with the priorities and criteria that guided the design and development of the social security of the past.