Mandate

The Rapporteurship is mandated to promote, protect, and ensure the recognition of the human rights of older persons in the region, as full legal subjects. This includes preventing discrimination based on age or age against older people, as well as intersectional discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnic-racial belonging, disability status, poverty, extreme poverty o social marginalization, nationality, religion, deprivation of liberty, immigration status or statelessness.

In addition to the inter-American normative instruments, the Rapporteurship has as its fundamental instrument the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons. The Convention enables the system of cases, individual petitions, as well as the system of consultations by the States to the IACHR on issues related to the effective application of the instrument.

To carry out its mandate, the Rapporteurship has the following functions:

• Monitor the human rights situation of older people in the Americas;
• Provide specialized analysis in the evaluation and processing of petitions, cases, requests for precautionary measures, and provisional measures presented to the IACHR regarding the human rights of older persons and promote their processing;
• Carry out promotional activities such as conferences, seminars and meetings with representatives of governments, academic institutions, non-governmental entities and others, with the main objective of disseminating information, promoting broad knowledge and stimulating public awareness of the rights of older persons and State obligations to guarantee them;
• Organize and hold visits to observe and document the situation of older people on the ground;
• Prepare specialized reports and studies with recommendations addressed to OAS member states for the protection and promotion of the human rights of older persons and follow up on the recommendations;
• Provide advice and technical cooperation in public policy with a human rights focus on older people, both to OAS member states, as well as to their political organs, regional organizations, and other public institutions and social organizations;
• Promote the adoption and implementation of legislative measures, public policies, programs and actions to guarantee the full exercise of the human rights of older people and their inclusion and participation in society, taking into account the principles of equality and non-discrimination, social participation, claim mechanisms and access to justice, production and access to information, gender perspective and prioritization of groups in vulnerable situations;
• Contribute to the development of inter-American standards on the rights of older persons;
• Promote the universalization and ratification of the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons;