New recommendations for meeting the needs of older people affected by disasters have been endorsed by the most senior policy-making body of the humanitarian system, in response to a report from HelpAge International.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), made up of leading UN and NGO humanitarian aid agencies, invited HelpAge International to review the humanitarian community’s current policies and practice relating to older people, and make recommendations for improvement.

A review team visited IASC member agencies’ head offices and emergency programmes in northern Uganda and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The visits showed that there were several aspects of current humanitarian practice that do not meet the needs of vulnerable older people. For example, older people rarely have access to community healthcare.

Strong and fragile

The report, Strong and fragile: learning from older people in emergencies, makes a series of recommendations designed to help relief programmes better meet older people’s particular needs, and to see older people as much as an asset as an under-served group. These include:

• increase awareness of the global growth in numbers of old and very old people
• develop training and guidelines on ageing issues for the humanitarian sector
• introduce more effective data collection, including disaggregation by age and sex
• engage older people in decision-making
• respond to the health needs of older people
• include older people in livelihood interventions
• reflect the special requirements of older people in return, repatriation and reintegration programmes
• reflect older people’s needs when distributing food packages.

A major step forward

The IASC will request member agencies to incorporate these recommendations into their policies and programmes, circulate them to global "cluster leads" and chairs of IASC subsidiary bodies, and review progress within 18 months.

HelpAge International will collaborate with the World Health Organization to develop practical guidance. The study was funded by the UNFPA Humanitarian Response Unit.

"This is a major step forward," says Jo Wells, HelpAge International humanitarian policy coordinator.

"For the first time it has been recognised at the highest level that older people have been neglected, and that the humanitarian community has a responsibility to support older people as well as other vulnerable groups such as women and children."

Download the report