Human Rights and the Care of Older People: Dignity, Vulnerability, and the Anti-Torture Norm

Set against the rapid aging of the world’s population, Human Rights and the Care of Older People explores the potential for the rule against torture and ill-treatment in international human rights law to better protect older people from care-related mistreatment. The book’s analysis is broadly relevant but is prompted by the widespread reports of older people’s suffering due to lack of access to care and coercion in respect of care needs. This includes the deprivation of liberty for ’care’.

While recognizing that a new United Nations Convention on the rights of older people is on the horizon, the book argues that there is a pressing need for older people and all human rights actors to use and progressively interpret the established right to freedom from torture and ill-treatment. As an interpretive lens, the book offers a conception of a dignity violation that may amount to prohibited ill-treatment and thus trigger states’ positive obligations to protect, including through systemic prevention measures.

This book is intended as a tool for advocacy and a call for critical awareness, highlighting the anti-torture norm’s potential for more effective application and challenging current legal barriers to such effectiveness. Meant for readers worldwide, the book addresses the rule against torture and ill-treatment from international law, regional European, Inter-American, and African perspectives.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Maeve O’Rourke, Assistant Professor of Human Rights, Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, University of Galway

Maeve O’Rourke, PhD (Birmingham), LLM (Harvard), BCL (University College Dublin), is Assistant Professor of Human Rights at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway, Ireland. She is also a Barrister at 33 Bedford Row, London. She is a member of the Young Academy Ireland, a former Harvard Law School Global Human Rights Fellow, and a former recipient of the UK Family Law Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year award for her research and advocacy alongside survivors of Ireland’s twentieth century church/state and family separation abuses. She has authored and edited numerous publications on state responsibility for protecting human rights in the social care context. She directs the Human Rights Law Clinic at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.