Global population over 60 increasing rapidly; UN role in solving their problems stressed.

Global population over 60 increasing rapidly; UN role in solving their problems stressed

The global population of people over 60 years of age will increase to 610 million in the year 2000, up from 380 million in 1980. By the year 2025, more than a billion people will reach that age. Even faster increases will be seen in the 80-and-above age group which is 1980 numbered 34 million -- 58 million by the year 2000, and 114 million by 2025.

These statistics were highlighted in a report on the question of aging (A/42/567) considered in the Assembly's Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) with a cluster of other social concerns, including questions related to youth, crime prevention and the disabled.

In his report, the Secretary-General stressed the many challenges that lay ahead for implementing the United Nations 1982 International Plan of Action on Aging. The trend towards aging could significantly affect a society's development potential, particularly when real dependency rates among the elderly were high. Offsetting the growing awareness of problems of aging and support for relevant policies and programmes were the increasing economic constraints and related factors which seriously affected the Plan's implementation.

He called for strengthening the interconnected roles of the United Nations as an international forum for highlighting problems of the aging and securing possible solutions, as a provider of technical and financial co-operation, and as a mechanism for co-ordinating global efforts to achieve the goals and objectives of the International Plan of Action.

The Assembly asked Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to strengthen existing programmes on aging and UN system-wide co-ordination in that field, and welcomed the establishment in Malta of the International Institute on Aging. Governments and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations were asked to contribute to the UN Trust Fund for Aging.

Other concerns

The United States voted against a text calling for States to give priority to measures to secure the implementation and enjoyment by youth of the right to education and to work, in conditions of peace, with a view to resolving the problem of unemployment...