European Union-backed groups are pressing for an international right to assisted suicide and government-sanctioned euthanasia.
They are pushing for those pro-death rights to be written into a new United Nations treaty on the rights of older persons, according to reports from negotiations held last week.
The Intergovernmental Working Group on the Human Rights of Older Persons held its first consultation on the content and scope of the proposed legally binding treaty. While most governments focused on protections against age discrimination and neglect, non-governmental organizations funded by the European Union called for controversial obligations that include the “right to die with dignity.”
AGE Platform Europe, an EU-funded group, criticized the fact that assisted suicide is usually seen as a “taboo” subject. The organization called for more “open discussion” and the incorporation of research conducted by the World Health Organization.
The Americas National Human Rights Institution Network, also funded by the European Union and the UN system, urged that the treaty include “reproductive rights” and “the right to die with dignity.” It further advocated an “intersectional approach.”
Leading pro-life observers warn that embedding such language in an international treaty risks normalizing and expanding the deliberate killing of the elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable people under the guise of rights.
The discussions come as countries already practicing euthanasia face growing criticism.
France recently has been debating legalizing the deadly practice and has been heavily criticized for insufficient safeguards protecting disabled, elderly, or mentally impaired individuals. In the United Kingdom, a previous Labour effort to pass a euthanasia law stalled after disability advocates raised alarms; a new version of the bill was reintroduced in June and is scheduled for a second reading on September 11.
Countries where euthanasia is already legal, including Canada, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, are under increasing fire for allowing assisted suicide for children, the elderly, disabled persons, and those diagnosed only with depression.
The World Health Organization does not oppose assisted suicide and quietly accepts it while promoting the notion of “death with dignity,” a term also used by euthanasia advocates, though the agency says it refers to palliative care.
Some disability rights groups have expressed limited caution. Inclusion Canada stated: “Where medical assistance in dying exists, eligibility must rest on the fact that the person is dying, never on disability or old age.” It added that “no advance document may authorize ending a person’s life without contemporaneous consent.”
The working group will continue consultations for the next two years and is expected to produce an initial draft of the treaty by the end of that process. Pro-life advocates argue that any treaty provision treating death as a right for the elderly would pressure nations worldwide to expand state-sanctioned killing rather than strengthen genuine care and protections for those most at risk.
