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Powerful resource of older persons must
be tapped for says Secretary-General in message on International Day
UN press release
October
1, 2003
Following is Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s message on the
International Day of Older Persons, observed 1 October:
Over the next few decades, older persons will form an increasingly large
and important presence in communities and societies everywhere. And
yet, until recently, little attention had been paid to how we can best use the
skills of older persons in development.
Then, last year, the Second World Assembly on Ageing adopted the Madrid International Plan of Action, which called for a fundamental shift in
how we think about ageing and older persons. The Madrid Plan moved
policy issues on ageing out of the narrow confines of the social welfare agenda, and into
the mainstream of development policy debate. It acknowledged that older
persons represent a powerful but untapped resource for society. It
put forward recommendations on how we can adjust to an ageing world and build a
society for all ages.
In my follow-up report to the current General Assembly, I proposed a
practical framework for both national and international action to
implement the Madrid Plan with two main focuses: national
capacity-building, and mainstreaming of ageing into the developmental agenda.
During this first year of the implementation process, we have seen
progress on a number of fronts. At the intergovernmental level, the
modalities for review and appraisal of the implementation of the Plan have been
agreed. During 2002, Member States in
Europe
and
Asia
developed strategies for implementation, while
Latin America
and the
Caribbean
should have a strategy in place by the end of this year. We expect
that a process of implementation in the African region will follow.
Every one of us can help build bridges between generations by embracing
the skills of older persons, whether in community or family affairs,
agriculture or urban entrepreneurship, education, technology or the arts,
poverty reduction or peacebuilding. The challenge before us is to bring the
invaluable attributes of older people out of obscurity and into step with other
instruments of development -- including the work to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals, our blueprint for building a better world in the
twenty-first century.
On this International Day of Older Persons, let us vow to make the most of
the powerful resource that older persons represent in the work for
development.
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© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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