Statement to GA81 interactive dialogue

Mr. Chair,

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Colleagues,

It is a particular honour to address the Third Committee for the first time as Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons.

I am grateful for the welcome and support extended to me since taking up this mandate, and I want to begin by recognizing the leadership shown by Member States here in New York over many years, including through the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing. That work helped bring us to a new stage: the elaboration of a legally binding international instrument on the human rights of older persons.

As that process now advances in Geneva, New York remains indispensable. The human rights of older persons belong in discussions on what follows the 2030 Agenda, in humanitarian responses and situations of conflict and displacement, in social development, and across the wider work of the General Assembly. They should not become a specialized conversation taking place in only one room of the United Nations.

Today, I present my report on autonomy, dignity and the enjoyment of human rights by older persons in situations of dependency.

Dependency is a familiar word, but it often carries assumptions with it. In public policy and in everyday language, it may become associated with frailty, decline and loss. Once a person is described as dependent, there is a risk that we begin to see that person less as someone who acts, decides and participates, and more as someone who is cared for, protected and managed.

My report starts from a different understanding.

Dependency is not the opposite of autonomy, and it does not belong to a small group of frail older people. Human beings live in relationships of interdependence throughout life. Illness, disability, poverty, bereavement, displacement or older age may increase the support we need, but they do not reduce our personhood, our dignity or our entitlement to make choices about our own lives.

The human rights question is therefore what happens when a person needs more support from others.

Does that support enable the person to continue living their own life, or does it gradually replace choice, participation and control?

Dependency is also never only about the individual. It is shaped by the environment in which a person lives.

An older person may become far more dependent because housing is inaccessible, transport has disappeared, services are unaffordable, digital systems exclude them, or appropriate support in the community does not exist.

A move into residential care may sometimes be a genuine choice. But where there is no realistic alternative, we should not confuse necessity with choice.

This is where the idea of rights-realizing systems becomes important.

A rights-realizing system does not ask only: What care does this person need? It also asks: What does this person want? What barriers prevent participation? What support would allow them to remain part of the life they have built?

Living independently does not mean living without assistance. It means having meaningful choices about where and with whom one lives, how everyday life is organized, and what support is needed to make those choices real.

Autonomy should therefore not be confused with complete self-sufficiency.

A person may need assistance with communication, mobility, personal care or decision-making and still remain the author of their own life. The task is to provide the support a person needs without taking over the decisions that remain theirs to make.

In practice, this means strengthening supported decision-making and accessible communication, ensuring meaningful participation in decisions about care and daily life, protecting people from coercion, and creating effective complaints and accountability mechanisms when rights are restricted or ignored.

Families and informal caregivers are central to this picture. In every region, they provide an enormous share of support.

Their contribution is indispensable, but it cannot be treated as an unlimited private resource. Caregivers need respite, information, services and social protection, while the rights, will and preferences of the older person must remain at the centre of the relationship.

This is also a question of gender equality. Women continue to carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care, while older women may experience accumulated inequalities that narrow their choices both as recipients and as providers of support.

Ageism compounds these risks.

When dependency occurs in older age, loss of choice is too easily accepted as inevitable. Isolation may be treated as unavoidable. Restrictions may be justified in the language of protection. Institutionalization may be described as the natural consequence of frailty.

But many of these outcomes are not consequences of ageing. They are consequences of how societies organize support, distribute resources and imagine later life.

We are accustomed to assessing long-term care through staffing, capacity, clinical outcomes and cost. These things matter. But they tell us little about whether a person still has control over everyday decisions, remains connected with others, can raise concerns without fear, and is able to participate in the community.

The quality of a system should therefore also be judged by whether it enables people to continue living their rights.

This report also comes at an important moment in the development of a new, legally binding instrument on the human rights of older persons.

The experiences of older persons in situations of dependency should be central to that process. A future instrument can help clarify States’ obligations when support needs increase: to respect autonomy and legal capacity; to ensure access to community-based support; to prevent neglect, violence and coercion; to protect participation; and to ensure that the absence of alternatives does not become a pathway to institutionalization.

Longer lives are one of humanity’s great achievements.

They require institutions capable of accompanying people through changing circumstances without changing their status as equal rights holders.

No society can promise that any of us will remain self-sufficient throughout life.

What it can do is build systems of support in which needing more help does not mean losing control over our lives, our place in the community, or our standing as equals.

That, ultimately, is what this report asks of States: to ensure that needing another person never means becoming less of a person.

Thank you.