History
Since 1959, World Refugee Year, the UN has designated specific years in order to draw attention to important issues. Governments of Member States, assisted by civil society, are encouraged to take the themes as opportunities to raise awareness and promote policy initiatives among citizens (The same rationale is applied to a lengthy list of annual days and special decades).
The work of many UN Agencies and programmes has direct connections with aging issues and will reflect IYOP priorities. That is certainly true for the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In 1992 the United Nations General Assembly decided, "in recognition of humanity’s demographic coming of age and the promise it holds for maturing attitudes and capabilities in social, economic, cultural and spiritual undertakings, not least for global peace and development in the next century" (resolution 47/5), to declare 1999 as the International Year of Older Persons (IYOP). The theme of this year is Towards a society for all ages.
At the launching ceremony, the World Health Organization (WHO) called upon policy-makers to recognise the importance of population ageing and put this recognition into action. In 1999, there were some 580 million people aged 60 years and over in the world. By 2020, this number is estimated to pass over the 1 billion mark. By that time, over 700 million older people will live in developing countries alone. It was therefore indispensable to bring ageing into the development agenda, she emphasized.
Read more about this topic: International Year Of Older Persons
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)