Discussions about the elaboration of a new UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons have been underway for nearly a decade, with no decision to commence drafting taken so far. Technocratic, material, political and other explanations have been offered for this lack of progress. We examine another, less-analysed dimension, namely competing explanatory and diagnostic frames about the reasons for and solutions to contemporary violations of older persons’ rights, in particular whether normative gaps or some other forms of gaps such as implementation gaps are the major problem. Drawing on the experience of the pre-negotiation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we propose an alternative frame of the ‘relative invisibility’ of older persons, which could contribute to addressing shortcomings in current justifications for a convention.