AGEING IN LUSOPHONE COUNTRIES: THE IMPACT OF AGE-SPECIFIC LEGISLATION ON THE RECOGNITION OF RIGHTS

The ageing phenomenon of the 21 St Century has led to an increased need of public policies to protect the rights of the older population. An example is the Law of the Rights of Older Persons, a Brazilian legislation. Some countries still lack this kind of legislation, which may cause more vulnerability among this population. The exercise of interpersonal rights in daily life requires recognition of general and specific duties, beyond the competence to exercise them. Considering that the first step in the exercise of rights is to recognize them, the goals of this descriptive study are: (a) presenting some exploratory and inferential data on the recognition of rights, from the responses of 60 elderly (30 Brazilian and 30 Portuguese) to an eight-item questionnaire regarding to the Law for the Rights of Older Persons, (b) discussing the importance of the elderly rights in the Brazilian and Portuguese contexts. In general, the Brazilian sample presented higher scores than the Portuguese sample for the recognition of three rights (priority assistance, free issuing of documents, reserved parking spaces) which might be related to the existence of a legislation in Brazil but not in Portugal. Both groups reported higher scores only of awareness of rights, medium scores for exercising rights and low scores for discrimination of unrespected rights and for mobilization of feelings of justice, which points to possible difficulties to claim for their rights. These findings may indicate that age-specific legislation is a necessary but not sufficient condition to prevent violence against the older persons. We discuss the importance of research and psychosocial interventions to promote the necessary skills for the older persons claim and defend their rights.