Panel on Mainstreaming and Implementation

Second World Assembly on Ageing

Madrid, 10 April 2002

A headline in a Swiss newspaper on 6 March had the title: "The unquiet (restless) world of the young ageing (retirees)", referring to the new outburst of activities, including entrepreneurship, of people living in post-retirement age.

While these examples reflect a new positive trend towards ageing, we only know too well that so far they reflect and refer only to a relative small minority of well-to do people in well-to do countries with a well functioning infrastructure of social securities, including good healthcare. In many developing countries and parts of developed countries alike poverty is still the main threat facing older men and women world-wide, depriving them to reach such a satisfactory life span.

Some of our member organizations (HelpAge, Global Action for Ageing) have done surveys and consultations with older people in some African countries (Mozambique, Kenya) which showed that up to 80% of interviewees did not have any source of income (job, family support or pension) nor having resources with which to generate income (e.g. livestock, farm implements, or other materials) They also did not have access to credit or other income generating facilities to help them for some income security. Increasingly, families suffering from poverty themselves, have few resources left to support the older generation.

In addition, older people suffer from many human rights violations, such as exploitation and violence, often based on cumulative discrimination because of their age, sex and race.

All this being known, ageing has not yet become the priority item it deserves. It is not a hot (sexy) issue. Although not entirely new on the UN agenda - the first World Conference on Ageing has taken place already 20 years ago - ageing as an issue is still unfamiliar to the public at large and elderly people have not benefited from the same attention as other target groups, like women or children. The rights of women have been advocated and codified in numerous international and regional human rights instruments, especially during the 1990s, and the concept of "gender" has been thoroughly discussed and developed during the last decade. But elderly people, who make up a large and most rapidly growing percentage of the population in developed, as well as in developing countries, have been neglected.
However, at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, the international community has to confront itself seriously with this potentially explosive issue and mainstream it into all UN discussions and policy recommendations, including into the debate on the right to development. The outcome of this Conference is therefore crucial to move ageing up on the UN agenda.

The Conference of NGOs in consultative relationship with the United Nations - CONGO - works for ensuring that the voices of NGOs and community organizations are heard at the international level. As the oldest and primary association of NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC, CONGO is one of the main UN interfaces for NGOs activities. Its approach can be described as a cyclical and process-oriented. CONGO aims, on the one hand, to bring down to the grass-root level the issues of the UN agenda and, on the other hand, to bring back to the international fora the concerns of NGOs in order to nurture and enrich the international debate. CONGO thus contributes to the emergence of a global civil society and to the strengthening of democratisation, both within the United Nations system and on the ground.

Our aim is to serve as a catalyst of the "acquis" of five decades of UN work and to mainstream and integrate them into the upcoming UN activities. In this "snowball process", we presently focus on the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as NGOs have been actively associated in their negotiation and they allocate very specific tasks to all actors of the development process - governments, international organizations and NGOs.

MDGs target a o. the eradication of poverty, social development and human rights. Yet these are also the main goals of the International Plan of Action on Ageing 2002: eradication of poverty in old age; empowerment of older persons; economic, social and cultural rights of elderly; solidarity and social development; partnerships between all levels of government, civil society and the private sector.

The UN had declared 1999 the International Year of Older Persons. Under the theme "Towards a Society for All Ages", very concrete suggestions have been developed for actions at the local, national and international level so that the question of ageing was supposed to be mainstreamed into the activities of public institutions, NGOs and community organization. Possible interesting forms of intervention and implementation were and still are:
· the constitution of elder councils for advising local authorities on the questions of local policy affecting elderly people;
· the creation of community-based organizations working with and for elderly people
· the integration of the needs of elderly people in urban development, particularly for housing, transportation, social services and health, taking into consideration the specificities of elderly people and particularly the most vulnerable of them, indigenous, migrants and refugees
· the creation of systems of community-based health systems covering both public and private sector, etc…

As CONGO is the primary UN counterpart for NGOs activities and has more than 400 affiliates all over the world, representing millions of millions of people, it offers an excellent platform for raising the awareness of NGOs and community organizations on the issue of ageing and encouraging them to deal with the kind of activities mentioned above. CONGO will thus actively promote and integrate the issue of ageing in its forthcoming projects.

As an example: Since 1998 we have started to be engaged in regional consultations. A first event was held in Kampala, Uganda, on crosscutting development themes of health, human rights, gender equality, peace and conflict resolution, democracy and good governance. We kept the focus on Africa, putting the spotlight on good practices and NGO activity.

Last year we brought numerous African NGOs to important UN meetings, such as the Commissions on Human Rights, Status of Women, the Third World Conference on Least Developed Countries, to the Special Sessions of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS and the ECOSOC High-level Session on African Sustainability. We helped to give them high visibility and integrated their work into the UN agenda, with particular attention to the Beijing + 5 agenda and the World Conference on Racism.

This integrated and interrelated approach reflects once more our interpretation of the Millennium Forum and Millennium Summit Development Goals to which we will add and integrate the issue of ageing. In order to assure a sustained follow-up for Africa we have entered into a partnership with the UN NGO Section of the Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and have recently launched the informal NGO Network for African NGOs.

Complementing our continued focus on Africa, we will start this year also to roll over to Asia. Under the title "UN-NGO Partnership for Democratic Governance" we will be organizing a consultation in Bangkok at the end of the year, where we will assess experiences of civil society contribution to the achievement of goals set forth by the United Nations. This will be an excellent opportunity again to highlight the issue of ageing.

In addition, the three NGO Committees on Ageing, here present and functioning under the CONGO umbrella, have been very active in the preparation for the NGO Forum and this Assembly. As a consequence, together we are therefore well placed to follow up on the recommendations and commitments of this World Assembly and monitor their implementation.

One of the recommendations of the Geneva NGO Committee has been to develop a codified instrument, a "Human Rights Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Older People". CONGO would support such an initiative.