A/HRC/45/14 82. Understanding the nature of barriers is essential in order to define the measures that are required to address them. It is of fundamental importance to conduct baseline studies at the national level on the impediments to the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons – such as all forms of discrimination on the basis of age, individually and cumulatively; exclusion; poverty; and all forms of violence, abuse, maltreatment and neglect. Data sets need to be adapted and expanded, with common sets of definitions, concepts and standards, following a human rights-based approach, to allow for comparability and monitoring. 83. Data used in assessments needs to be disaggregated by age and other critical sociodemographic variables and to expose life-course specificities. Age cohorts need to reflect the heterogeneous nature of the older population to allow for a differentiation of older and very old persons, who have different needs and capacities. They have to be granular enough to make it possible to take into account the relativity of the notion of age, depending on the context, given that age is a social construct, and that persons who have endured conditions of war, conflict and natural disaster cannot be regarded with the healthy ageing metrics of affluent societies. 84. There is a need for conceptual frameworks incorporating a life-course approach that are able to provide more comprehensive, comparable and nuanced data on older persons. This would also enable the tracking of systemic and institutionalized discrimination. The development of a global rights-based monitoring framework or index on the rights of older persons, using structure, process and outcome indicators, would be essential in this regard. 85. As a key human rights requirement, the involvement of older persons at all stages of data collection, analysis, use and reporting, including in the development of surveys, is crucial. There is increasing evidence of how citizen-generated data can help reveal the situation of marginalized groups, fill in data gaps and drive policy change. This would also contribute to changing societal assumptions and attitudes on old age and older persons, which is imperative given their significance for the framing of the ageing category as circumscribed for statistical purposes. 86. An important contribution would be the establishment of focal points at the national level, that allows for coordinated efforts to improve data collection, analysis and reporting on ageing and older persons, including by making better use of existing data. 87. To achieve statistical representativeness and permit disaggregation, existing surveys need to oversample older persons in the higher age groups or resort to alternate sampling and data-collection methods, such as targeted sampling or respondent-driven sampling, and possibly develop quotas for the inclusion of older persons in surveys. Metadata and paradata needs to be available, standardized and accessible, as relevant, across data collectors and data-collection instruments.63 88. Guidance is required on data linkage, including of official and unofficial data, and on the integration of traditional and non-traditional data-collection methods. This particularly applies to data from new technologies and their use in artificial intelligence and automated decision-making, in view of potential risks. 64 89. Statistical offices, national human rights institutions and non-governmental organizations need to work together more closely. Collaboration can range from consultation on the development of surveys and on agenda-setting, to reviewing existing data to identify gaps, to participating in the training of statisticians so that 63 64 18 OHCHR, “A human rights-based approach to data: leaving no one behind in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Policy Brief on the Impact of COVID-19 on Older Persons; Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere, with Insight, Impact and Integrity, 2020–2022; OHCHR, “A human rights-based approach to data: leaving no one behind in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”; OHCHR, Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation (HR/PUB/12/5); and General Assembly resolution 45/95, “Guidelines for the regulation of computerized personal data files”.