United Nations | Tuesday
MOST countries are ill-prepared to face the rapidly growing problem of ageing, and developing states in particular lack the resources to tackle it, senior UN officials warned on Monday.
”This is not just an industrial countries problem,” the UN’s under secretary general for economic and social affairs, Nitin Desai, told a news conference.
”Developing countries are going to be deeply confronted over the next few decades with the type of increase” in the proportion of old people recently seen in developed nations, he said.
The news conference was to brief reporters on preparations for the Second World Assembly on Ageing, to be held in Madrid, Spain, from April 8-12, 2002.
According to a recent report by the UN population division, in 2050, for the first time in human history, the number of people over the age of 60 will be greater than the number of those under 15 years old.
In the less developed regions, the proportion of people over 60 is forecast to rise from an average of eight percent today to 20% by 2050.
Pamela Mboya, a former ambassador of Kenya and board member of the NGO HelpAge International, said the Madrid conference was an opportunity to help develop ”a realistic, manageable, implementable strategy”.
The assembly will address the main socio-cultural, economic and demographic realities of the 21st century, particularly the lack of legislation in many countries to guarantee the human and political rights of older people.
The main areas of social protection to be faced are pension, savings, social security, property and care systems.
”Many, many countries do not have policies incorporating the welfare of the ageing”, Mboya said.
Concepcin Dancausa, a top social affairs official of Spain, which will host the assembly during its presidency of the European Union, called for a ”world strategy” to face these issues.
”The problem is not so much that there is an increasing number of old people, the issue is how to balance it with the young population,” she said.
”Right now, developed countries are facing a very low natality rate and a very long life expectancy, which usually means that older population has more weight than the young,” she added.
The Madrid conference is expected to focus on the specific needs of old women, who outnumber men of their age but who are victims of discrimination under the property laws of many countries and thus increasingly vulnerable to poverty as they grow older.
The conference will also look at the situation in African countries, where many older people have assumed new roles as parents to Aids orphans. – Sapa-AFP
10