News

HelpAge International is currently collaborating with Handicap International on its response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan. We are using our joint expertise to identify the needs of the most vulnerable groups affected by the conflict in Syria, including older people and people with disabilities, to ensure their access to essential relief services, and to look at the best ways of providing further assistance to them.

The Chief Executive officer of HelpAge International, Richard Blewitt, will be leaving the organisation after more than six years at the helm.

This week, the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is taking place at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The event also coincides with International Women’s Day, which takes place on 8 March and celebrates the achievements of women while campaigning for greater gender equality.

On 20 February, World Day of Social Justice, HelpAge is launching the first ever campaign to address the needs of older people in humanitarian emergencies.

HelpAge International says humanitarian agencies and donors have failed to address the needs of older people in emergency situations around the world - despite older people being among the most vulnerable. HelpAge has chosen 20 February 2013, World Day of Social Justice, to call for better support for older people during emergency and recovery situations.

HelpAge is responding to flooding in Chokwe District, Gaza Province after heavy rains hit southern and central Mozambique in January, affecting over 150,000 people, flooding farmland and pastures and damaging houses, roads, drainage systems and electricity supplies.

The 2012 UNAIDS Report does not mention the ageing of HIV. As a result of the omission of data on those aged 50 and older, the report is inaccurate and misleading. The report’s failure to include aging with HIV tacitly fuels several stigmatizing myths about older adults: that they don’t have sex or engage in other risky behaviours; that HIV only occurs among young people below age 49; and that their challenges in living with and treating HIV, among other health problems, are no different than those of younger adults.

The second meeting of the High-level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda is taking place this week in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. HelpAge is attending and coordinating a roundtable discussion on ageing and disability.

HelpAge International is extremely concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation within Syria as well as for the refugees who have fled the country. We are particularly worried about the many frail and vulnerable older people who are caught up in the crisis.

Older people are some of the nearly one million people displaced by the devastating Typhoon Bopha which destroyed or damaged over 200,000 homes in the Philippines. So far around 500 older people have received cooking and bedding supplies from HelpAge and our local partner, Coalition of Services of the Elderly (COSE).

HelpAge International and the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) are launching an initiative focusing on the protection of older refugees, one of the most vulnerable groups in displacement situations. The project will take place in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State where 110,000 refugees have crossed the border from Sudan during the last year.

At 6:00 AM on January 12, 2013, more than a thousand older people, will march in Manila, to demand more support for older people affected by Typhoon Bopha.