Foreword
The anticipated Post-2015 Development Agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals and targets framework, promises to be universal, peoplecentred, planet sensitive and to ‘leave no one behind’. Our vision is ambitious and transformational, one of a single ambitious and universal agenda – one applicable to all countries and that leaves no one behind – ensuring shared prosperity for all without harming the planet, grounded in human rights principles, including universality, non-discrimination and equality. This is not business as usual.
The Post-2015 Development Agenda must complete the unfinished Millennium Development Goals and respond to the challenges and opportunities of our world. Demographic trends are having a powerful impact on our future and present. Ageing populations the world over are the result of falling fertility and longer lives. In 2015, there are 901 million women and men aged 60 and over worldwide. This figure will reach 1.4 billion by 2030, or 16.5 per cent of the global population – up to three-quarters of whom will live in developing countries. Over 23 per cent of the world’s women are already aged 50 and over.
All of us, of all ages, have much to contribute to the aspiration of UN Member States to ‘transform our world by 2030’. Shared political commitment to end all poverty and hunger, combat inequalities, secure the environment for current and future generations and to deliver a safe and secure future for all people – of all ages – gives us a road down which to travel, and older women and men must be made visible and included.
The Global AgeWatch Index shows not only what works for older people but also highlights how much we need to do to fulfil the promise of our world. Improving data on age will help us in this task. Gaps on age data must be filled to know how we are doing to ensure all targets are met, and for the specifics of age and age-related targets in the proposed goals and their targets to be responded to. The energy of the data revolution, to make sure we ‘leave no one behind’, will help us.
We must redouble our efforts to make ageing visible, to listen to, include and hear older people, for our global agenda to deliver its true and visionary promise.
Amina J. Mohammed
Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning, United Nations, New York