Follow-Up to the 2nd World Assembly on Ageing

Encourages Governments to pay greater attention to building capacity to eradicate poverty among older persons, in particular older women, by mainstreaming ageing issues into poverty eradication strategies and national development plans, and to include both ageing-specific policies and ageing-mainstreaming efforts in their national strategies;

Encourages Member States to strengthen their efforts to develop national capacity to address their national implementation priorities identified during the review and appraisal exercise, and invites Member States that have not done so to consider a step-by-step approach to developing capacity that includes the setting of national priorities, the strengthening of institutional mechanisms, research, data collection and analysis and the training of necessary personnel in the field of ageing;

Also encourages Member States to overcome obstacles to the implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action by devising strategies that take into account the entirety of the human life-course and foster intergenerational solidarity in order to increase the likelihood of greater success in the years ahead;

Further encourages Member States to place particular emphasis on choosing national priorities that are realistic, feasible and have the greatest likelihood of being achieved in the years ahead, to develop targets and indicators to measure progress in the implementation process and to present their views on the outline of the strategic implementation framework contained in the report of the Secretary-General3 so that they can be reflected in the final draft of the framework to be presented to the Commission for Social Development at its forty-seventh session, in February 2009;

Recommends that Member States increase awareness-raising of the Madrid Plan of Action, including by strengthening networks of national focal points on ageing, working with the regional commissions and enlisting the help of the Department of Public Information of the Secretariat to expand media coverage on ageing issues;

Invites Governments that have not done so to designate focal points for handling follow-up of national plans of action on ageing;

Invites Governments to conduct their ageing-related policies through inclusive and participatory consultations with relevant stakeholders and social development partners, in the interest of developing effective policies creating national policy ownership and consensus-building;

Encourages the international community to support national efforts to forge stronger partnerships with civil society, including organizations of older persons, academia, research foundations, community-based organizations, including caregivers, and the private sector, in an effort to help to build capacity on ageing issues;

Calls upon Governments to ensure, as appropriate, conditions that enable families and communities to provide care and protection to persons as they age and to evaluate improvement in the health status of older persons, including on a gender-specific basis, and to reduce disability and mortality;

Encourages Governments to continue their efforts to implement the Madrid Plan of Action and to mainstream the concerns of older persons into their policy agendas, bearing in mind the crucial importance of family intergenerational interdependence, solidarity and reciprocity for social development and the realization of all human rights for older persons, and to prevent age discrimination and provide social integration;

Encourages the international community to enhance international cooperation to support national efforts to eradicate poverty, in keeping with internationally agreed goals, in order to achieve sustainable social and economic support for older persons;

Encourages the international community and the relevant agencies of the United Nations system, within their respective mandates, to support national efforts to provide funding for research and data-collection initiatives on ageing in order to better understand the challenges and opportunities presented by population ageing and to provide policymakers with more accurate and more specific information on gender and ageing;

Recommends that Member States reaffirm the role of United Nations focal points on ageing, increase technical cooperation efforts, expand the role of the regional commissions on ageing issues and provide added resources for those efforts, facilitate the coordination of national and international non-governmental organizations on ageing and enhance cooperation with academia on a research agenda on ageing;

Recommends that ongoing efforts to achieve the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration,⁵ take into account the situation of older persons;

Requests the Secretary-General to translate the Guide to the National Implementation of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing⁶ into all official languages of the United Nations so that it can be used more effectively by Member States, and encourages Member States to translate the Guide into their respective languages when appropriate;

Also requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session a report on the implementation of the present resolution, including information on the promotion and protection of human rights as they pertain to older persons.