International Year of Older Persons, 1999

Encourages all States, the United Nations system and all other actors, in reaching out for a future society for all ages, to take advantage of the Year so as to increase awareness of the challenge of the demographic ageing of societies, the individual and social needs of older persons, the contributions of older persons to society and the need for a change in attitudes towards older persons;

Encourages States that have not yet done so to establish a national focal point or broad-based committee for the Year, and re-emphasizes that activities for the Year should be initiated primarily at the national level;

Recommends that the Commission for Social Development should mainstream the issue of older persons into the work of the Commission and the preparatory work for the special session of the General Assembly to review the World Summit for Social Development in the year 2000;

Calls upon States, United Nations agencies and bodies and institutions of civil society, including the research community, to avoid age and gender bias in their treatment of older women so as to ensure that all older women have equal access to the private sector and to social services and to ensure their full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Encourages States to embody in appropriate legislation the rights of older persons to equal access to and the use of social services, including care-giving systems and support services, without any discrimination;

Urges that the issue of older persons be mainstreamed into the work of the United Nations and national socio-economic programmes and plans, as appropriate;

Invites national committees to consider the desirability of drawing up:

Invites national and international development entities, foundations and enterprises to explore ways of improving the access of older persons to credit, training and appropriate technologies for income generation and their participation in family, community and small businesses;

Invites Member States, in the five-year review and appraisal of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development,6 to examine the implications of individual and population ageing;

Invites the Department of Public Information of the Secretariat to continue its information campaign, intensifying, as feasible, its activities in January 1999 in support of countries that were unable to launch observances of the Year on 1 October 1998;

Recommends that research agendas for the next decades address the socio-economic adjustments required to move towards a society for all ages, focusing essentially on the lifelong and society-wide immediate and long-term implications of individual and population ageing within varied national contexts, and requests the United Nations programme on ageing to give priority attention to the research needs of developing countries;

Invites the United Nations Volunteers and organizations of older persons to evaluate the contributions of senior volunteers in creating societies for all ages, in keeping with the traditions, resources and aspirations of each country;

Invites those institutions of civil society that are playing a vital role at the local, national and international levels in promoting the Year to focus their observance in 1999 of the International Day of Older Persons, 1 October, on the theme “Late-life potentials and contributions in a new age”;

Requests States to participate, at an appropriate global policy-making level, in the four plenary meetings which, in resolution 52/80 of 12 December 1997, it decided to devote at its fifty-fourth session to the Year and its follow-up;

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session on the implementation of the present resolution.