• People who have lived their lives in poverty cannot accumulate savings.
• Older people’s cash incomes are a fraction of minimum earnings and material assets are typically of very little value.
• In developing countries older age is with associated problems of poor diet, ill health and inadequate housing
• Older people are often isolated, living on the margins of families and communities and deeply vulnerable. The extent to which they are reached by services and support is a litmus test of the development process.
• The elderly among uprooted populations tend to be even more isolated and vulnerable than the elderly population at large – as traditional support structures have collapsed and due to the inability of blanket distributions to access the more isolated, less mobile, and less visible.

• Women outlive men in nearly all countries, rich and poor. In developed countries older women account for more than 10% of the total population.
• The number of older women in Asia currently exceeds the total for all older women in developed countries and will increase from 144 million today to 355 million by 2025.
• Sub Saharan Africa’s 15 million older women are projected to more than double to 33 million by 2025.
• Older women are more likely than not to be widows, with this likelihood increasing with age. In 1990 there were 21.5 million widows in China, greater than the combined total for Europe.
• Older women often suffer multiple disadvantages arising from biases of gender, widowhood and old age.
• Elderly female refugees and IDPs coming from or currently in conflict zones are even more likely to be widowed than the elderly female population at large due to military service, war losses, and human rights abuses which often target and include the elderly male population.

• The substantial productive contribution of older people to their families and communities is largely unrecognised by policy makers.
• Too often older people are stereotyped as passive or helpless – the realities of their lives unobserved.
• Ageing is often perceived as a burden for countries and communities. However, channeling resources to enable older people is an investment in society.
• Elderly refugees and returnees’ involvement with program design and humanitarian assistance planning could enhance the preservation of cultural norms and traditions due to the often-elevated role they hold in their communities, their leadership skills, and their rich life experiences.

• The majority of older people in most countries live in their own homes, in connection to their own families and communities. The remarkable feature of family support is its durability, not its fragility.
• But rapid urbanisation and migration for work in many countries have significantly altered family and community relations, especially where changing living conditions and lack of income stretch family capacities to provide for the more vulnerable members.
• Demographic change will increase strains on hard-pressed family support structures, as falling fertility rates combine with increasing longevity.
• Care of older, dependent parents will fall on fewer children, and the impact will be greatest on those with the least material resources.
• Care of older refugees and returnees increasingly falls on the humanitarian community due to family break-up in flight, the breakdown of local and community structures in emergency and post-conflict situations, and the depletion or loss of personal and family resources.

• A forty year old woman with a history from childhood of poor nutrition, multiple pregnancies and punishing physical labour is already on the threshold of old age.
• Chronic illness is endemic among many older people in the developing world, where technical advances in medicine have far outrun the social and economic development, which in industrialised countries have enabled relatively disease-free living.
• Elderly refugees, returnees, and IDPs are at increased risk for health problems due to gaps in treatment, the interrupted availability of medicines, the flight or movement itself further aggravating chronic health problems, and the often unsanitary conditions of collective centers and camps especially in the early stages of an emergency.

• In developing countries the majority of old people continue to work into very old age, often despite chronic and disabling illness. Work encompasses not only paid labour, but also the full range of livelihoods on which older people, in common with other age groups, rely.
• Only a small proportion of countries in either the developed or developing world provide comprehensive social security or pension programmes. These have no impact on the great majority of people who work in the informal sectors of their countries’ economies.
• In conflict and post-conflict situations, both formal social security and pension programmes as well as informal, extended family financial support systems are likely to breakdown or be interrupted – often for extended periods of time – further marginalizing the elderly.

• Older people face insidious age discrimination in the provision of services and access to support.
• Some governments have begun to recognise their responsibility to ensure that the rights of older persons are not violated, that they get opportunities to contribute and an equitable share in development benefits
• the requirement for affirmative action in favour of older people needs to be assessed
• special attention needs to be paid to older women so that they do not become victims of triple neglect and discrimination on account of gender, widowhood and age.
• more emphasis, research and programming efforts have to be directed towards the growing elderly population among uprooted communities.

Recommendations and Action Points

The far-reaching economic and social implications of global ageing during the next century are beginning to be recognised in countries throughout the South and the North. Much of the focus, however, is on the ‘crisis’, rather than the challenge of ageing. Action is needed to avert the negative consequences associated with major demographic change. However, there also needs also to be a fundamental shift in policy and opinion on ageing including the uprooted aged. Firstly, we must acknowledge the contribution to economic and social development made by older people. Secondly, we must address the situation and needs of older people in the context of their basic human and refugee rights.

Individual and collective initiatives by donor countries, international agencies and NGOs, and by national governments on behalf of the uprooted elderly should begin in the following priority areas.

Key action point: establish programming priorities, impact indicators, and best practices that target the elderly in refugee, IDP, and returnee situations which address the issues of access, special service needs, unique contributions, and participation in program design and services.

Action for the uprooted elderly person must, however, take place in the context of larger individual and collective efforts.

Key action point: adopt the UN Principles for Older Persons as a legally binding charter of rights, to which all governments are accountable.

Key action point: develop integrated strategies to enable older people’s basic needs to be met in the areas of income, health, housing, and community support, as well as social attitudes, addressing isolation, fear, discrimination, disability and abuse.

Key action point: increase research, data collection and analysis relating to the special needs and capacities of older people.

Key action point: set and measure development targets - together with appropriate indicators - which relate to older people, particularly in areas such as health status, income and poverty.

Key action point: ensure that policy research, planning exercises, programme design and monitoring directly involve older people, especially the most disadvantaged, in the consultation process.

A Statement Prepared by HelpAge and the International Catholic Migration Commission

For further information, please contact:

William Canny, Secretary General, ICMC
wcanny@icmc.dpn.ch

Lesley-Anne Knight, HelpAge International
hai@helpage.org