Social Structures
Author: Matthew McKenna, PhD Researcher at Maynooth University’s Assisting Living and Learning Institute (ALL Institute)
In July 2019, the United Nations (UN) ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’, said that:
‘The mainstreaming of the rights of older persons with disabilities into all disability and ageing-related policies and programmes is key to ensure that the concerns and needs of older persons with disabilities are adequately addressed’.
However, older persons with disabilities face an intersectional form of discrimination within the European Union (EU), which derives from the intersection of ‘ableism’ and ‘ageism’. People within the EU are now living longer than ever before, with 101.1 million people aged 65 or over residing within the EU-27 in early 2018. Close to half of all persons over the age of 65 in the EU have some form of disability. Incidences of disability in old age, especially acquired disability, increase substantially amongst individuals in older age categories and, as a result, older persons with disabilities are at increased risk of neglect, loss of supports, abuse and poverty, amongst other risks.
The European Commission’s ‘Green Paper on Ageing’, released in January 2021, describes the difficulties faced by older people with disabilities in juxtaposition to the challenges faced by their counterparts in younger age groups:
‘Older people with disabilities can face particular problems. Working-age people who develop a disability often benefit from labour market-related support to compensate for loss of income and extra expenditure. While this is insufficient in many cases, people acquiring a disability after retirement are often ineligible for these benefits’.
Individuals with acquired disabilities face challenges in retaining work and steady employment. However, when older persons acquire an impairment, the latter is often viewed by society, and even the person themselves, as part of the inevitability of old age, rather than conceived of interaction with external barriers as a disability. This promotes the longevity of deeply ingrained ableist and ageist views of ageing and disability among EU states. The June 2017 submission by AGE Platform Europe in relation to the Draft General Comment on Article 5 ‘Equality & Non-Discrimination of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)’ aptly described this subtle and intersectional form of discrimination by highlighting:
Such different treatment reflects a view according to which ‘because you are old you are not disabled’ or ‘you are disabled, but you do not need the same level of support because older people are not so active anymore’.
The UN has adopted non-binding instruments to advance the human rights of older persons, including the United Nations Principles for Older Persons 1991 and the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing 2002. However, AGE Platform Europe argues that these instruments do not address the full potential of the use of Assistive Technology (AT) and robotics technology in supporting autonomy in old age. It also says that:
‘Although the link between older persons and persons with disabilities has been underlined by the UN CRPD Committee, the OHCHR, the Independent Expert on the Enjoyment of all Human Rights by Older Persons, and the UN Secretary General among others, no substantive provision acknowledges the situation of older people with disabilities as a type of intersectional discrimination’.
Older people with disabilities face greater difficulties in accessing AT as persons with disabilities over the age of 65 within the EU often lose access to state disability benefits and entitlements, mobility allowances, medical rehabilitation support services, personal care assistance, as well as funding and grants for the provision of AT such as adjusted cars amongst other essential supports. Caregivers for older people with disabilities also have fewer supports and rights than their counterparts who work with persons with disabilities who are under the age of 65.
Coupled with a substantial decrease in rights and entitlements to financial aid and other assistance for disability-related supports, older persons are also at increased risk of poverty after the age of 65 as they are no longer in work and in many cases, the pensions of older persons are very often insufficient to secure access to the necessary services required for disability-related supports. In July 2019, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Catalina Devandas-Aguilar, said that:
‘The fragmentation of policies for older persons and for persons with disabilities results in the invisibility in law and in practice of experiences of disability in later life’.
Alana Officer, World Health Organisation (WHO), Coordinator of Ageing and Life Course says:
‘Ageism can take many forms. These include depicting older people as frail, dependent, and out of touch in the media, or through discriminatory practices such as health-care rationing by age, or institutional policies such as mandatory retirement at a certain age’.
On the Eurostat website, terms such as ‘Old-Age Dependency’ are frequently used when describing statistics on population and demographic balances to the reader. It is arguable that terms such as this are ageist in their composition and meaning, as they can carry an inference of older persons above the age of 65 as being ‘burdensome’ on society. Furthermore, the 2010-2020 European Disability Strategy did not explicitly address specific issues faced by older persons with disabilities. AGE Platform Europe notes that although the EU Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030 acknowledges the relationship between old age and increased incidences of disability, it does not go far enough in addressing the challenges faced by older people through the loss of access to supports, entitlements and self-stigmatization of disability that can come with age.
The focus of the two strategic programmes has primarily been oriented upon the right to work and the creation of jobs and positions for greater numbers of persons with disabilities, alongside remote education and distance learning. Whilst this is a hugely positive development, there appears to be a clear preferential emphasis in EU policies towards persons with disabilities who are of working age to participate in public life and employment, thus making them a contributory economic unit.
The EU approach to disability and old age has, thus far, not aligned itself fully with the human rights-based approach as advocated by the Report of the Independent Expert on the Enjoyment of all Human Rights by Older Persons. Section 93 of the ‘Conclusions and Recommendations’ of this report states that:
‘To ensure universal access, States should integrate assistive technology in health and social protection schemes, making it available at affordable prices and offering financial assistance to those who need it. Conditions of access must not be based on age alone. While promoting effective assistive technology, States must also retain other support options, including traditional care, and not create disproportionate disadvantages for individuals who may prefer, or whose needs are better catered for through, other forms of support. States should also establish monitoring and accountability mechanisms regarding the provision of assistive technology in order to evaluate the adequacy of support arrangements and prevent human rights abuses’.
In November 2020, AGE Platform Europe said in its contribution to the ‘Public consultation: Feedback Disability Rights Strategy 2021-2030’, of the European Commission (EC), that:
‘It is therefore crucial that the next Disability Strategy addresses the intersectionality between disability and ageing, as well as that of ageism and ableism, across different domains, such as accessibility, participation, equality, employment, education and training, social protection, health and external action’.
To realize this vision, it is essential for the EU to be amenable to these recommendations and adopt a fully universal human rights-based approach to disability and ageing through the refinement and enhancement of policies derived from existing legal instruments to eliminate dual discrimination for older persons with disabilities.