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 of the Madrid Plan of Action, 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, sustainable and feasible and have the greatest likelihood of being achieved in the years ahead and to develop targets and indicators to measure progress in the implementation process;

Encourages all Member States to further implement the Madrid Plan of Action as an integral part of their national development plans and poverty eradication strategies;

Invites Member States to identify key priority areas for the remainder of the first decade of implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action, including empowering older persons and promoting their rights, raising awareness of ageing issues and building national capacity on ageing;

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 seek increased attention for ageing issues;

Encourages 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;

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;

Invites Member States to ensure that older persons have access to information about their rights so as to enable them to participate fully and justly in their societies and to claim full enjoyment of all human rights;

Calls upon Member States to develop their national capacity for monitoring and enforcing the rights of older persons, in consultation with all sectors of society, including organizations of older persons through, inter alia, national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights where applicable;

Also calls upon Member States to strengthen and incorporate a gender perspective into all policy actions on ageing, as well as to eliminate and address discrimination on the basis of age and gender, and recommends that Member States engage with all sectors of society, including women’s groups and organizations of older persons, in changing negative stereotypes about older persons, in particular older women, and promote positive images of older persons;

Further calls upon Member States to address the well-being and adequate health care of older persons, as well as any cases of neglect, abuse and violence against older persons, by designing more effective prevention strategies and stronger laws and policies to address these problems and their underlying factors;

Calls upon Member States to take concrete measures to further protect and assist older persons in emergency situations, in accordance with the Madrid Plan of Action;

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;

Also 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;

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;

Requests the United Nations system to strengthen its capacity to support, in an efficient and coordinated manner, national implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action, where appropriate;

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;

Invites States and relevant bodies and organizations of the United Nations system, including relevant human rights mandate holders and treaty bodies and the regional commissions, as well as intergovernmental and relevant non-governmental organizations with an interest in the matter, to make contributions to the work entrusted to the open-ended working group, as appropriate;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session a report on the implementation of the present resolution, including the situation of the rights of older persons in all regions of the world.