For the past two days, the National Council on Ageing has been hunkered down at a workshop. It's called human rights and fundamental freedoms of older persons and it looked at the basic human rights of older persons in Belize. Camela Palma told us that the workshop is part of the Council on Ageing's plan to improve services to older persons in society.
Camela Pamela,
"What we are doing today is addressing really for the very first time, minutely, human rights issue dealing with older persons. The rights that older persons have to accessible and affordable health care, to housing, to social protection mandated by legislation, and so on. I would not say that the human rights of older persons are not being respected but they need to be enhanced and this workshop has come out of our policy. The policy for older persons of Belize states that older persons should be respected, their human rights should be respected, that they should be allowed to grow old with dignity. And we get busy looking at programs, looking at issues of let us see if we can get the free medicine and so for older persons but we need to look at the bigger picture. Why are we doing this? We are doing this in a context of the human rights of older persons, always."
The workshop ended this afternoon.
