Fight against poverty will not be won without attention to elderly – UN officials

With more than 10 per cent of the elderly worldwide living on less that $1 per day, and 80 per cent with no regular income, United Nations officials have urged civil society representatives to press their respective governments to give priority attention to the needs of this growing population group.

Speaking to a briefing in New York on Thursday that brought together more than 400 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), General Assembly President Jan Eliasson called for "solidarity between generations to remove artificial borderlines between young and old, north and south."

UN Assistant Secretary-General Jomo Kwame Sundaram pointed out that the number of elderly in the world population is set to quadruple by 2015, and if something is not done to help them, poverty will swell at a commensurate rate.

Analyzing current trends, he said many traditional support mechanisms, such as the extended family, have eroded, leaving large numbers of grandparents vulnerable. Compounding these pressures, grandparents are now increasingly caring for their grandchildren. In Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, over 60 per cent of all orphans are taking in by grandparents who generally receive no State assistance to cope with the added economic burden.

Mr. Sundaram charged that while many antipoverty programmes target specific population groups, "older women and older men largely remain invisible to many policy makers and development agencies."

At the same time, he sounded a note of hope, noting that the elderly are organizing themselves to good effect. "Change is coming about," he told the gathering, "and civil society [representatives] can only help."