Follow-Up to the 2nd World Assembly on Ageing

A/RES/78/177View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 24bSocial development, including questions relating to the world social situation and to youth, ageing, disabled persons and the family, published in 2023.

What other versions does this mandate have?

23 versions · 2003–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/179

2025A/RES/80/179Follow-up to the 2nd World Assembly on AgeingLatestCompare with previous version
2024A/RES/79/147Follow-up to the 2nd World Assembly on AgeingCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/78/177Follow-up to the 2nd World Assembly on AgeingCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/77/190Follow-up to the 2nd World Assembly on AgeingCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/76/138Follow-up to the 2nd World Assembly on AgeingCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

4 topics

Ageing Persons Care of Ageing Persons Human Rights Social Policy

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2024.

2024A/79/157Follow-up to the International Year of Older Persons : 2nd World Assembly on Ageing report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

69 operative paragraphs

Reaffirms the Political Declaration and the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, 2002;

Calls upon all States and the international community to cooperate, support and participate in the global efforts towards an age-inclusive implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to mobilize all necessary resources and support in that regard, according to national plans and strategies, including through an integrated and multifaceted approach to improving the well-being of older persons, and in this regard encourages Member States to seize this opportunity to take into account issues of relevance to older persons in their efforts to promote the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals;

Encourages Member States to address the situation of older persons in their voluntary national reviews presented at the high-level political forum on sustainable development;

Also encourages Member States to accelerate their efforts to mainstream the linkages between population ageing and sustainable development into national policies and programmes across all levels of government, where appropriate, and to link ageing to frameworks for social and economic development and human rights;

Recognizes that the major challenges faced by older persons undermine their social, economic and cultural participation;

Emphasizes the need to take effective measures against ageism and to view older persons as active contributors to society and not as passive receivers of care and assistance and an impending burden on welfare systems and economies, while promoting and protecting their human rights;

Encourages Member States to intensify efforts towards identifying ageing as an opportunity, and recognizes that older persons make substantial contributions to sustainable development efforts, including through their active participation in society;

Recognizes the challenges related to the enjoyment of all human rights that older persons face in different areas and that those challenges require in-depth analysis and action to address protection gaps, and calls upon all States to promote and ensure the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for older persons, including by progressively taking measures to combat age discrimination, neglect, abuse and violence, as well as social isolation and loneliness, to provide social protection, access to food and housing, health-care services, employment, information and communications technologies, including new technologies, assistive technologies, legal capacity and access to justice and to address issues related to social integration and gender inequality through mainstreaming the rights of older persons into sustainable development strategies, urban policies and poverty reduction strategies, bearing in mind the crucial importance of intergenerational solidarity for social development;

Takes note with appreciation of the work of the Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons and the renewal of the mandate at the fifty-first session of the Human Rights Council, and stresses the importance of close coordination between the work of the Independent Expert and the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing established by the General Assembly in paragraph 28 of its resolution 65/182, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of their respective mandates and those of other special procedures and subsidiary organs of the Council, and relevant United Nations bodies and treaty bodies;

Takes note of the report of the Independent Expert issued in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 51/4, and encourages Member States to be mindful of the recommendations contained therein;

Notes that the report of the Independent Expert examines the rights of older persons in the context of climate change-induced disasters, and encourages Member States to be mindful of the recommendations contained therein;

Invites Member States to continue to share their national experiences in developing and implementing policies and programmes aimed at strengthening the promotion and protection of the human rights of older persons, including within the framework of the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing;

Encourages Governments to actively address, through national, regional and international efforts, issues that affect older persons and to ensure that the social integration of older persons and the promotion and protection of their rights form an integral part of development policies at all levels;

Encourages Member States to create an enabling environment for the equal, full, effective and meaningful participation of older persons in political, social, economic and cultural life, while taking into account the diversity of situation of older persons and responding to population ageing as well as to multiple forms of discrimination resulting from ageism and other inequality throughout the life course;

Also encourages Member States to adopt and implement non-discriminatory policies, legislation and regulations, to systematically review and amend these, where appropriate, if they discriminate against older persons, especially on the basis of age, and to take appropriate measures to prevent discrimination against older persons in, inter alia, employment, social protection and the provision of social, health-care and long-term care services;

Calls upon Member States to promote, in accordance with their national priorities, equitable and affordable access to sustainable basic physical and social infrastructure for all, without discrimination, including affordable serviced land, housing, modern and renewable energy, safe drinking water and sanitation, safe, nutritious and adequate food, waste disposal, sustainable mobility, health-care services and family planning, education, culture and information and communications technologies, and to ensure that these services are responsive to the rights and needs of older persons, while recognizing that planning for and providing opportunities for making cities inclusive of older persons’ economic and social participation is an important dimension of the construction of sustainable cities;

Recognizes that the risk of poverty increases with old age in several ways, and that the pandemic has had a negative impact on the financial security of older persons, including older widows, and in this regard calls upon Member States to enable people to reach old age in better economic conditions by, inter alia, addressing barriers in labour markets and inadequate social protection systems and combating elder abuse and neglect as well as the adverse impact of all forms of discrimination and inequalities experienced by older persons, especially older women;

Encourages Member States to take into account the multidimensional nature of the vulnerability of older persons to poverty and economic insecurity, including through the promotion of good health, care and well-being, in their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the national level;

Encourages Governments to pay greater attention to building capacity to eradicate poverty among older persons, in particular older women and older persons with disabilities, by mainstreaming ageing issues into poverty eradication measures, women’s empowerment strategies and national development plans, and to include both ageing-specific policies and ageing-mainstreaming efforts in their national strategies;

Encourages Member States to consider expanding, in accordance with domestic legislation and policies, the reach of sustainable pension schemes, including but not limited to strategies such as social pensions, and increasing their benefits, with a view to ensuring income security in old age;

Also encourages Member States to develop and implement long-term care strategies, as well as to conduct research on good practices of care strategies, recognizing and supporting both paid and unpaid care work for the benefit of older persons, and to further promote long-term care as a positive social and economic investment and a source of employment expansion;

Further encourages Member States to promote terms and conditions of care work guided by International Labour Organization standards for all care workers, including but not limited to migrants, and to adopt measures to tackle the gender and age stereotypes for care work;

Encourages Member States to strengthen their efforts to develop national capacities to address their national implementation priorities identified during the review and appraisal of the Madrid Plan of Action by considering and devising strategies that take into account the entirety of the human life course and foster intergenerational solidarity, the strengthening of institutional mechanisms, research, data collection and analysis and the training of necessary personnel in the field of ageing;

Recommends that Member States increase efforts to raise awareness of the Madrid Plan of Action and identify key priority areas for its implementation, including empowering older persons and promoting their rights, bearing in mind the crucial importance of intergenerational family interdependence, solidarity and reciprocity for social development, raising awareness of ageing issues and building national capacities, as well as promoting and supporting initiatives to advance a positive public image of older persons and their multiple contributions to their families, communities and societies and working with the regional commissions, as needed, and enlisting the help of the Department of Global Communications of the Secretariat in seeking increased attention for ageing issues;

Encourages Governments that have not done so to designate focal points for handling the follow-up of national plans of action on ageing, and also encourages Governments to strengthen existing networks of national focal points on ageing;

Invites Governments to conduct their ageing-related policies through inclusive and participatory consultations with relevant stakeholders and social development partners, in the interest of developing effective policies that create national policy ownership and consensus-building;

Recommends that Governments be inclusive in involving older persons and their organizations in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of policies and programmes that affect them, including through simple consultative mechanisms to co-research or co-design such policies and programmes with or by older persons and to take due account of involving those who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and are particularly vulnerable to high incidences of poverty and social exclusion;

Encourages Member States to involve older persons, where appropriate, in relevant international discussions, such as in the General Assembly and other processes held under the auspices of the United Nations, by considering incorporating them in their national delegations;

Recommends that Member States enhance their capacity to more effectively collect age-disaggregated data, statistics and qualitative information, disaggregated also, when necessary, by other relevant factors, including sex and disability, in order to improve assessment of the situation of older persons, recognizes that the data revolution presents new opportunities and challenges for the use of new data to help with the measurement of progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, in particular its aspects of relevance to older persons, and to ensure that no one is left behind, and in this regard recalls the establishment by the Statistical Commission of the Titchfield Group on Ageing-Related Statistics and Age-Disaggregated Data and the consideration of its work;

Encourages Member States to enhance the capacity of national statistical offices to identify and address existing deficits in data on ageing, to contribute to the effective follow-up on the implementation of international agreed commitments, including in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

Encourages States parties to existing international human rights instruments, where appropriate, to address the situation of older persons more explicitly in their reports, and encourages treaty body monitoring mechanisms and special procedure mandate holders to pay due regard to the situation of older persons in their dialogue with Member States, particularly in their concluding observations and reports, respectively;

Recognizes the importance of strengthening intergenerational partnerships and solidarity, and in this regard calls upon Member States to promote opportunities for voluntary, constructive and regular interaction between young people and older generations in the family, the workplace and society at large;

Encourages Member States to adopt social policies that promote the development of community services for older persons, taking into account the psychological and physical aspects of ageing and the special needs of older women and older persons with disabilities;

Also encourages Member States to ensure that older persons have access to information about their rights so as to enable them to participate fully and justly in their societies and to claim full enjoyment of all human rights;

Calls upon Member States to develop their national capacity for monitoring and enforcing the rights of older persons, in consultation with all sectors of society, including organizations of older persons, through, inter alia, national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights, where applicable;

Also calls upon Member States to strengthen and incorporate a gender and disability perspective into all policy actions on ageing, as well as to address and eliminate discrimination on the basis of age, sex or disability, and recommends that Member States engage with all sectors of society, in particular with relevant organizations with an interest in the matter, including organizations of older persons, women and persons with disabilities, in changing negative stereotypes about older persons, in particular older women and older persons with disabilities, and promote positive narratives of all older persons;

Acknowledges that universal health coverage implies that all people, including older persons, have access, without discrimination, to every country’s determined sets of needed promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative basic health services and essential, safe, affordable, effective and quality medicines, while ensuring that the use of such services does not expose older persons to financial hardship, with a special emphasis on the poor, vulnerable and marginalized;

Emphasizes the urgent need to ensure the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and to facilitate the development of robust health systems and universal health coverage, encompassing universal, timely, affordable and equitable access to all essential health technologies, diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines, safe, quality and effective vaccines, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other health emergencies, in order to ensure full access to COVID-19 immunization for all, in particular older persons, including those who are in vulnerable situations, especially older women;

Urges Member States to develop, implement and evaluate policies and programmes that promote healthy and active ageing and the highest attainable standard of health and well-being for older persons and to develop health care for older persons as part of primary care in the existing health systems;

Recognizes the importance of training, education, lifelong learning and capacity-building of the health workforce, including paid care workers and unpaid caregivers, for home-based care;

Stresses the need to close all digital divides, including, inter alia, both between and within countries, the rural-urban digital divide, the gender digital divide, and between youth and older persons, which can be experienced by older persons by providing universal and affordable access to and use of information and communications technologies, including new technologies and the meaningful use of digitally enabled services, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to people throughout their life course without discrimination based on age or other forms of discrimination, and welcomes efforts by the United Nations to assist Member States, upon their request, in achieving this;

Encourages Member States to promote digital literacy with a special focus on enhancing digital skills and competencies of older persons without discrimination of any kind, including socioeconomic status, education level, race and/or ethnicity, gender and disability as well as language barriers, by taking into account national and regional contexts;

Also encourages Member States to ensure that the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of age is incorporated and upheld in health and other policies and programmes and that the implementation of such policies and programmes is regularly monitored;

Urges Member States to strengthen intersectoral policy frameworks and institutional mechanisms, as appropriate, for the integrated management of the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, including health promotion, health-care services and social welfare services, in order to address the needs of older persons;

Encourages Member States to provide services and support to older persons, including grandparents, who have assumed responsibility for children who were abandoned or whose parents are deceased, have migrated, have been displaced, including in the context of humanitarian emergencies, or are otherwise unable to care for their dependants;

Calls upon Member States to address the issue of the well-being of and adequate health-care services for older persons, as well as any cases of neglect, abuse and violence against older persons, in particular older women, by designing and implementing more effective prevention strategies and stronger laws and by developing coherent and comprehensive policy frameworks to address these problems and their underlying factors;

Urges Member States to increase the resilience of older persons and ensure that they are able to achieve and maintain financial security during emergencies, through, inter alia, addressing the digital gap that currently affects many older persons and protecting them from violence and abuse in digital contexts; strengthening legal and social protection and adopting adequate employment measures; providing better care and support services, promoting long-term care and support at home, in the community and in institutional settings, with a view to ensuring their empowerment, as well as their autonomy and independence; adopting a people-centred, gender-sensitive comprehensive and integrated approach, with full respect for human rights, to health care to improve the well-being of older persons, including mental health care, non-communicable disease management and adult immunization efforts; and developing national vaccination plans that give priority to older persons and are guided by principles of equality and social justice;

Calls upon Member States to take concrete measures, in accordance with national circumstances and, as appropriate, international humanitarian law, to further protect and assist older persons in emergency situations, and invites all States to promote a culture of protection, taking into account the particular needs of older persons, in accordance with the Madrid Plan of Action and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 by, inter alia, including older persons in disaster risk reduction and national and local emergency planning and response frameworks, collecting and using data disaggregated by age, sex and disability for policy design and implementation, as well as carrying out risk and vulnerabilities analyses of older women in humanitarian emergencies with a view to minimizing the risk to older women of all forms of violence in such emergencies;

Encourages Member States to integrate lessons learned from the pandemic with regard to older persons in order to combat ageism, protect the human rights of older persons and strengthen existing policies and laws to address all forms of discrimination in all areas of their life, as well as to take concrete measures that integrate age- and gender-responsive preparedness plans into relevant policy areas at the national and international levels and ensure that older persons and their representatives are consulted in planning and decision-making processes that affect them, on an equal basis with others, in order to address their specific needs;

Encourages national and local governments to improve access to affordable housing, particularly for older persons, through integrated housing policies and social protection measures, and to provide a range of support services that promote their dignity, autonomy and independence, including by addressing legal and policy barriers to equal and non-discriminatory access to adequate housing for them;

Calls upon Member States to ensure access to justice for older persons, whose right to adequate housing may have been violated due to discrimination based on age;

Encourages Member States to adopt measures to tackle homelessness and to protect older persons from arbitrary forced eviction, as well as to take all appropriate measures to ensure that adequate alternative housing or relocation is available, especially in situations of emergencies, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic;

Stresses that, in complementing national development efforts, enhanced international cooperation, in particular North-South cooperation, which is complemented by South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation, is essential to support developing countries in implementing the Madrid Plan of Action, while recognizing the importance of such assistance as well as the provision of financial assistance;

Encourages Member States to establish or to strengthen strategic approaches and policy options in relation to the physical and mental health of older persons in the light of new and emerging disease patterns, notably non-communicable diseases, as well as in relation to increased life expectancy, with particular attention to promoting good health and addressing health needs across a care continuum, including prevention, detection and diagnosis, management and rehabilitation, treatment and palliative care, with the aim of achieving comprehensive health-care coverage for older persons;

Encourages the international community, including international and bilateral donors, to enhance international cooperation to support national efforts to eradicate poverty, in keeping with internationally agreed goals, in order to achieve sustainable and adequate social and economic support for older persons, while bearing in mind that countries have the primary responsibility for their own economic and social development;

Also encourages the international community to support national efforts to forge stronger partnerships with civil society, including organizations of older persons, academia, research foundations, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, including caregivers, and the private sector, in an effort to help to build capacity on ageing issues;

Encourages the international community and the relevant agencies of the United Nations system, within their respective mandates, to support national efforts to provide funding for research and data-collection initiatives on ageing, as appropriate, in order to better understand the challenges and opportunities presented by population ageing and to provide policymakers with more accurate and more specific information with regard to a gender perspective on ageing, as well as to include indicators that provide an evidence base for the equitable delivery and effective monitoring of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda and national policymaking, as well as to gain a better understanding of how to promote ageing in a way that is not adversely affected by rapid urbanization and gentrification;

Recognizes the important role of various international and regional organizations that deal with training, capacity-building, policy design and monitoring at the national and regional levels in promoting and facilitating the implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action, and acknowledges the work that is undertaken in various parts of the world, through the regional commissions and regional initiatives, as well as the work of institutes such as the International Institute on Ageing in Malta and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna;

Takes note with appreciation of the work of the Inter-Agency Group on Ageing, a network of United Nations entities that exchange information and integrate ageing into their work programmes on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda;

Requests the focal point on ageing of the United Nations system, the Programme on Ageing of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat, to continue to enhance its collaboration with the focal points of the regional commissions, funds and programmes, and recommends that Member States reaffirm the roles of focal points within the United Nations system, increase technical cooperation efforts, consider expanding the role of the regional commissions on ageing issues and continue to provide resources for those efforts, facilitate the coordination of national and international non-governmental organizations on ageing and enhance cooperation with all relevant stakeholders, to promote ageing issues and develop partnerships in this regard;

Reiterates the need for additional capacity-building at the national level in order to promote and facilitate further implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action, as well as the results of its review and appraisal cycle, and in this regard encourages Governments to support the United Nations trust fund for ageing so as to enable the Department of Economic and Social Affairs to provide expanded assistance to countries, upon their request;

Requests the United Nations system to strengthen its capacity to support, in an efficient and coordinated manner, national implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action, where appropriate;

Requests relevant entities of the United Nations system, including the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), to ensure that the situation of older women is mainstreamed and incorporated across their work and to support, in accordance with their respective mandates, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, in particular its aspects of relevance to older persons, including gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls through, inter alia, the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against women;

Invites relevant entities of the United Nations system, including UN-Women, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Health Organization, among others, as well as the International Organization for Migration, to include in reports to their respective governing bodies relevant information on efforts made by Member States and the international community on issues of relevance to older persons, including their social inclusion;

Notes with appreciation the work of the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing, and recognizes the positive contributions of Member States, as well as relevant bodies and organizations of the United Nations system, including relevant human rights mandate holders and treaty bodies and the regional commissions, as well as national human rights institutions, intergovernmental and relevant non-governmental organizations with an interest in the matter and invited panellists, during the first 13 working sessions of the Working Group, and invites Member States, as well as relevant bodies and organizations of the United Nations system and other relevant stakeholders, to continue to make contributions to the work entrusted to the Working Group, as appropriate;

Encourages Member States to continue to contribute to the work of the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing, in particular by presenting measures to enhance the promotion and protection of the human rights and dignity of older persons, such as best practices, lessons learned and possible content for a multilateral legal instrument, as appropriate, in order to enable it to fulfil its existing mandate of strengthening the protection of the human rights of older persons by considering the existing international framework of the human rights of older persons and identifying possible gaps and how best to address them, including by considering, as appropriate, the feasibility of further instruments and measures, and by considering adopting at each session intergovernmentally negotiated recommendations to be presented for consideration by the General Assembly;

Requests the Secretary-General to provide all necessary support to the Open-ended Working Group on Ageing for the organization of its fourteenth session, of four days, in March 2024, with the provision of conference services, including interpretation services, and to include the annual sessions of the Working Group in the Organization’s calendar of conferences and meetings;

Invites the Independent Expert to address and engage in an interactive dialogue with the General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session under the agenda item entitled “Social development”;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-ninth session a report on the implementation of the present resolution.

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