Fiona Bruce – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2015-12-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to protect the welfare of vulnerable older people in developing countries.

Mr Nick Hurd

Age features as part of our efforts to leave no one behind and in country level analyses as a key factor in understanding poverty.

Older people have been specifically included in the Sustainable Development Goals on ending hunger, creating sustainable cities and communities and the means of implementation. As well as this, the requirement to provide disaggregated data to evidence progress against the Sustainable Development Goals will ensure that governments and development agencies can identify those at risk of being left behind and design programmes to lift them out of poverty. The UK was a key player in achieving these goals.

Many DFID programmes reach and include older people, for example on health systems strengthening, eye care, or specific programmes for the poorest including supporting slum dwellers in Tanzania, or supporting widows resulting from the genocide in Rwanda. DFID has also supported Governments to establish social pensions for older people to ensure that they do not live in poverty.

Finally, DFID also continues to fund a number of age-specific development programmes which are delivered by Civil Society Organisations in some of the world’s poorest communities to ensure that older people are not left behind.