HelpAge International

• April 6, 2021

During more than a year of tracking the parameters of Covid-19, medical science has made one thing clear: the virus hits the elderly hardest. Yet their vulnerability is often taken as fate. A new international study disagrees. Prejudice, institutional bias and societal discrimination against older people in both rich and poor countries, it says, …

Covid-19, Gender Violence, Health and Population, Human Rights, SDGs

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In an Aging Global Population, Women Want Productive Lives

Barbara Crossette

• March 23, 2016

Census figures everywhere confirm that the population of the world is getting steadily older. Much has been written and alarms have been sounded in richer nations about the economic effects of aging populations and declining births. But this phenomenon is going global. Better health and smaller family size are prolonging lives in developing countries …

Gender Violence, Health and Population, SDGs, Women

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Missing: A UN Agency for the World’s Aging Population

Barbara Crossette

• January 6, 2014

A few years ago in Ethiopia, a survey conducted for the government in the capital, Addis Ababa, discovered that 88 percent of a growing number of homeless older people as well as two-thirds of those living at home did not have enough to eat. A staggering 93 percent of all city residents over 60 …

Health and Population, UN Agencies

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Time for a Gray Revolution?

Dulcie Leimbach

• February 15, 2012

The United Nations is the place to go for people who are oppressed or neglected to discuss their problems and try to find solutions. One of the most recent special-interest groups to meet at the UN highlighted the plight of older people, who, of course, have grievances and want to be heard. “No longer …