International Day of Older Persons – a celebration and a call to action

Excellencies, colleagues, friends,

By 2050, the number of people aged 65 years and older will likely exceed 1.6 billion. 16 percent of the global population.

This is a triumph of human progress in healthcare, living conditions, and social development. But it also highlights just how important it is that we address the profound challenges facing older people.

Today, on the International Day of Older Persons, we celebrate the incredibly rich contribution that older persons make to our societies.

Older persons have an essential perspective, informed by the past while also looking to the future, in our search for a more peaceful, more sustainable, and more equal world.

And so, while today represents a celebration, let it also mark a clarion call to action. 

A reminder of our shared responsibility to uphold the dignity and human rights of older persons.

And a warning of the ageism they experience every day. Of the unique discrimination they face in accessing healthcare, employment, and social services. Of their exclusion – intentionally or unintentionally – from decision-making or as a result of technological progress, heightening their loneliness and isolation. 

My Office is deeply committed to this issue – and together with the NGO Committee on Ageing and other important stakeholders, we are making progress.

There is growing support from Member States to create an international legally binding instrument on the rights of older persons. The consensus of Member States at the 14th session of the Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing, and the subsequent General Assembly resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to continue these discussions and start drafting a UN convention, are pivotal steps.

We have a clear vision. Now, we must turn it into reality. And my Office is ready to work with all of you to make this happen.

You have been at the forefront of advocating for the rights of older people. Now, I urge you to intensify your efforts to ensure more advocacy, more voices, more action.

Let us seize this golden opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to the principles of equality, dignity, and respect for all, regardless of age.

Let us work together to ensure that older persons are valued and included.

We will all be better for it.

Thank you.