– As delivered –

Statement by H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly

Delivered by Ambassador Kwabena Osei-Danquah, Chef de Cabinet

11 March 2019

Excellencies,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen, 

It is an honour to deliver this keynote address on behalf of the President of the General Assembly, Her Excellency María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés.

I am very grateful to AARP International and to UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) for hosting this briefing occasion, and I am sorry I cannot join you in person due to prior commitments.

Older people, and especially older women, often say they feel invisible. It is not hard to understand why. From yawning gaps in development data to under-representation of older people in the media, we seem stuck in a outdated view of what it means to be over 60 in 2019.

We urgently need to change. Almost 700 million people today are aged 60 and above. This number is forecasted to rise to around 2 billion by 2050, meaning that older people will represent about a fifth of the global population. They will outnumber children and young people. The Asia-Pacific region will have the largest number, and Africa will see the largest growth.

Dear friends,

As women tend to live longer than men, they make up the majority of older persons, particularly at advanced ages. They are also less likely than men to participate in paid employment and more likely to spend more time away from paid employment.

And they generally earn less than men while in employment. At current rates, the global gender pay gap is not due to close until 2086. This means women tend to contribute less to pension schemes.

Together, these factors mean that they are more vulnerable to poverty in older age, and more reliant on publicly-provided social services.

Friends,

The UN General Assembly endorsed the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing back in 2002. It set out a bold agenda covering older people and development; health and well-being into old age; and ensuring enabling and supportive environments for older persons. It broke ground by making recommendations for joint action by governments, civil society and other actors. And it linked, for the first time, issues relating to older persons with UN frameworks on human rights, and on social and economic development.

Since then, the General Assembly has continued to work on these issues, through the Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing, for instance, which has generated a healthy debate on the need for a dedicated convention on the rights of older persons. Agenda 2030 also makes explicit reference to older persons, and rightly so.

Older people make a substantial contribution to the global economy, both through formal and informal work. This contribution often extends way beyond retirement age and includes the transfer of assets and resources to their families and communities. Older women, in particular, play a crucial role in domestic and care work – a contribution that is often unseen, under-valued and un-counted.

But despite these pressing, data-driven imperatives, policy-makers are still not placing enough emphasis on the needs and challenges of an aging population. This was expressed powerfully in the recent report by HelpAge International: Living, not just surviving.

Nor are policy-makers doing enough to harness the contribution that older women and men make across society. We talk a lot about young people in the context of the future of work and social protections. But we must remember that among the youth of today, 60 percent are expected to celebrate their 80th birthday. Centenarians will become more common too. We cannot continue to treat so-called old age as one phase of life. 

Dear friends,

One vital step will be to plug existing data gaps, to ensure planning, policies and resource allocation are based on evidence, not assumptions or stereotypes. This means helping countries to collect and disaggregate data by age, gender, ethnicity, disability and so on. It also means doing more to listen to older people.

We must also ensure that we invest in social services and infrastructure. The Millennium Development Goals made an enormous contribution in areas such as infectious disease through targeted initiatives. But one important evolution in the Sustainable Development Goals is the emphasis placed on strengthening primary health care and other public services.

These services provide a crucial safety net for older persons – particularly older women, as well as others who are more likely to be vulnerable and left behind. However, despite progress in expanding social protection coverage, just 45 percent of people worldwide are covered by at least one social protection benefit. That means four billion people are not.

Next month, on 10 April, I will host a high-level event to mark the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organization. Later in the year, we will have two high-level political forums on sustainable development, and the high-level meeting on financing for development.

I hope that we can work together to use these opportunities to highlight the importance of social protections, the need for better data and policies on older persons, and the need to see investment in older people as an investment in our future.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to speak. I look forward to hearing from the other speakers and to discussing these issues informally over lunch and in the months to come.

I thank you.