This chapter explores the meaning of human rights for older people, and for the social workers who work with them, within what is often referred to as a human rights and social justice profession (International Federation of Social Workers, 2014). At the outset, it must be understood that although human rights invoke ‘moral obligation’ (Townsend, 2006, p 166) and ‘can provide social workers with a moral basis for their practice’ (Ife, 2012, p 1) they are not fixed. Human rights are both dynamic and complex. They pose complicated and difficult questions, rather than providing answers. The challenge for gerontological social work is to both address that complexity and lend its support to the struggles that diverse older people face in gaining access to their rights.

The chapter begins with a discussion of how human rights instruments have failed to serve older people well. It considers the reasons for the limited progress of ongoing international efforts to address this failure. It comments on why older people have not taken charge in these efforts and how constraints on old age identities have combined with those on social work practice to preserve this status quo. It argues that an important task for gerontological social work practitioners is both to respect and to harness the abilities of the older people with whom they work to demand their human rights in the interests of social justice for both themselves and their peers.

Older people and the evolution of human rights

Ideas about human rights have evolved in parallel with changing views in societies within a globalising world (Turner, 1993; Ife, 2012). Modern understandings and interpretations of rights have been influenced by what is widely held as the most influential statement of human rights in the modern world (American Bar Association, 2011, 106C): that is, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abbreviated as UDHR) in 1948. The 30 articles of the UDHR are the centrepiece of what in 1966 became a tripartite International Bill of Rights when the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966) were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.