PRESS
RELEASE
The ICPD+5 review
process
Governments, Society
Must Act Promptly on Ageing,
Says UNFPA Official as
Technical Meeting Begins
BRUSSELS, 6 October 1998 -- Prompt actions and
sound strategies are urgently needed to meet the needs of growing
numbers of older persons worldwide, according to Mohammed Nizamuddin
of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The Director of
UNFPA's Technical and Policy Division made the suggestion at the
opening of a Technical Meeting on Population Ageing.
The
four-day meeting here is part of "ICPD+5", a review of progress in
carrying out the programme of the 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.
In welcoming
remarks, Mr. Nizamuddin said ageing will increasingly become a
feature of the world's population in the 21st century. By 2020, he
said, 13 per cent of the population is expected to be aged 60 or
older; 70 per cent of the elderly will live in developing
countries.
While the problems of ageing are well-known in
developed countries, Mr. Nizamuddin said, ways of dealing with them
will differ from one society to another and change over time. For
example, he observed, co-residence of elderly parents and adult
children is common in developing nations, but such arrangements are
declining as modernization occurs. This trend will undermine the
economic security of the old, since only a small urban minority is
currently eligible for pensions.
In many less-developed
countries, few provisions for support of the elderly exist outside
the family, he continued. Declines in traditional support for older
persons will impact hardest on elderly women, who are often without
partners and destitute in their late years.
Mr. Nizamuddin
also spoke about the high risk of poor health at older ages, and the
growing difficulty facing families -- especially women care givers
-- in endeavouring to meet the specialized health care needs of
elderly members. This problem is compounded by the reluctance of
many governments to direct scarce resources to this
sector.
He said UNFPA has helped developing countries with
policy formulation and planning to meet older persons' needs. These
efforts include training programmes on ageing and development,
gender-specific research, advocacy to draw policy makers' attention
to the concerns of older people, and assistance to strengthen
national capacity to deal with ageing.
There are no universal
solutions to the challenge of managing ageing, cautioned Antonio
Golini, a demography professor from Rome University. Presenting a
paper on the lessons of population ageing in developed countries, he
said solutions should fit each country's particular economic and
social circumstances and respect its family traditions. Caution is
necessary, given the sharp differences between states in the
intensity and speed of ageing. For example, by 2050, half of all
Italians may be over age 58, while half of Ethiopians will be 25 and
below.
African governments and international agencies should
assist the orphans and widows of those who die of acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS), to reduce the burdens on older people
who currently support such relatives, said James Ntozi, a population
studies professor at Kampala's Makerere University. In his
co-authored paper on ageing in Africa in the context of AIDS, he
said the elderly raise a significant fraction of Ugandan
orphans.
AIDS mostly affects people in their most productive
years, often depriving elderly parents of their means of support, he
added. Because many older people lack adult children or relatives to
take care of them, the extended family should be supported and
direct assistance given to the elderly, the professor
said.
Some African governments have recognized the need to
care for the elderly, he continued. For example, a presidential
decree in Mozambique calls for assistance to older people who lack
family support. Senegal has organized associations for the elderly
and created development projects to be managed by them. In Uganda,
community members are being trained to meet the needs of the
elderly; the Government recently named a Deputy Minister in charge
of issues concerning the elderly and the disabled.
Friendlier
banks, post offices and senior citizens' services centres should
mobilize resources and provide improved services to older persons,
said Zaki Hasan, Dean of Karachi's Jinnah Medical College in
Pakistan, in a paper on the health status and service needs of the
elderly. Networks of senior citizens should be formed to enable them
to act collectively, medicines should be provided at concessional
rates, and there should be special transport for the elderly and
easy access to facilities, he added.
UNFPA organized the
Technical Meeting on Population Ageing in cooperation with the
Population and Family Study Centre (CBGS), a Flemish Scientific
Institute in Brussels. The meeting will review the experiences and
policies of the developed countries on population so as to identify
lessons and best practices that can be adopted by their developing
counterparts. It will also appraise the implementation of the ICPD
Programme of Action and identify key actions to meet older persons'
needs, with a special focus on the gender and poverty
dimensions.
The meeting will include: the presentation of
technical papers; working group meetings; and a panel discussion on
key country policies, poverty and gender aspect of ageing. Papers
will be presented in six sessions on: the Process, Dimensions and
Prospects of Ageing; Promotion and Maintenance of Health in Later
Life (6 October); Support Systems for the Elderly; Special Needs (7
October); and the Economic and Social Policy Implications of an
Older Society (8-9 October).
The meeting is scheduled to be
closed on 9 October by UNFPA's Executive Director, Dr. Nafis Sadik.
It was opened today by the General Director of the CBGS, Robert
Cliquet, who welcomed participants and introduced them to his
organization. He described population ageing as one of the important
issues of the ICPD and one of the most critical issues facing both
industrialized and developing nations.
As part of the ICPD+5
process, UNFPA is sponsoring a series of technical meetings and
round-table discussions, leading up to an international forum on
ICPD implementation, to be held in February 1999 in The Hague, the
Netherlands. The conclusions of all these meetings will be
background material for a report by the United Nations
Secretary-General to a special session of the United Nations General
Assembly, in June and July 1999, on post-ICPD progress.
The
current meeting is being held a week after this year's International
Day of Older Persons, during which the United Nations declared 1999
the International Year of Older Persons. Ageing also is one of the
main themes of UNFPA's flagship publication, The State of World
Population 1998, entitled "The New
Generations".
(For information purposes only. Not
an official document.)
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