Geneva, April 3, 2025 – The United Nations Human Rights Council began an intergovernmental process on April 3, 2025, to draft an international human rights treaty on older people, according to Human Rights Watch, which was announced today.
The consensus resolution marks a significant victory for human rights and multilateralism at a time of growing international uncertainty.
Older people around the world experience a wide range of human rights violations on a daily basis.
They include violence and mistreatment, age-based discrimination, social, economic, and political exclusion; denial of access to care and support services; inadequate social security; exclusion from climate change responses; and abuses in armed conflict.
“The UN Human Rights Council’s decision to pursue an international treaty on the rights of older people is a landmark victory not just for older people, but for everyone,” said Bridget Sleap, senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch.
“State support for this treaty is an important endorsement of the multilateral human rights system.”
Significant protection gaps for older people remain in the current international human rights framework. Years of advocacy by older people and civil society groups, notably the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People (GAROP), led to this historic UN action. GAROP, a global network of more than 400 civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, has campaigned since 2011 to strengthen the rights and voice of older people all over the world.
In 2024, after 14 sessions, a dedicated UN Working Group on Ageing acknowledged existing gaps and highlighted the need to address them, including through a new UN treaty, laying the foundation for the Human Rights Council’s action.
Older people and civil society organizations have engaged for more than a decade in UN processes, both in New York and Geneva, to gain support for a new international treaty. A group of countries consisting of Argentina, Brazil, Gambia, the Philippines, and Slovenia, listened to older people and civil society and pushed this initiative forward at the Human Rights Council, the UN’s preeminent human rights body.
The first meeting of the intergovernmental working group is scheduled to take place before the end of 2025. The working group, which all UN member countries may join, should now proceed quickly and ensure meaningful participation and engagement from stakeholders, especially older people and their representative organizations from all regions of the world.
“Human rights last a lifetime, and rights in older age should be guaranteed as at any other time in our lives,” Sleap said.
“Ageism, age discrimination, and violation of older people’s rights demand the same degree of attention and protection in the international human rights system as any other rights abuses. The fruits of decades of discussions and advocacy have brought us here, but much work lies ahead.”
