Blog
Entries by Mark Gorman
(12 entries)
The hidden world of older women’s work
As the world’s populations ages, across nearly all societies women make up a majority of older people. We are all too familiar with the negative, even apocalyptic terms in which ageing societ...
Is ageism really “the last taboo”?
Trying to launch any wide-ranging advocacy campaign in the age of COVID-19 is demanding enough. Launching a campaign to combat ageism, as the World Health Organization has recently done with its Gl...
Climate change and environmental crisis: twin challenges in an ageing world
While the urgency of the response to Covid-19 has throughout this year relegated other global emergencies, there are reminders that they have not gone away. A recent New Scientist article for...
Closing the evidence gap on older refugees
Amidst the continuing and growing Coronavirus crisis this year’s World Refugee Day has again passed almost unnoticed, despite the nearly 80 million people who are forcibly displaced around th...
Reaching older people in a crisis: learning from experience?
In a recent policy brief on Coronavirus and ageing, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs declared that the virus mean that the world was grappling with “an unparalleled he...
Ageing and place: exploring how cities shape older people’s lives
As we grow older our lives are increasingly shaped by where we live, and for growing numbers of older people in both high- and low-income countries, home is in the city. Rapid urban population agei...
The Journey to Age Equality
On the 1st October the UN once again celebrated the annual International Day of Older Persons (IDOP) its 2019 theme aligning with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 focussing on pathwa...
“Missing Millions”? Older people in disasters and emergencies
As if we needed it, the damage inflicted by Cyclone Idai on three countries across southern Africa is yet another reminder of the increasing vulnerability of whole populations to the impacts of cli...
Older people’s campaigning comes of age
Earlier this year I wrote about the movement that has built up calling on the United Nations to pass a Convention on the rights of older people. In this 70th anniversary year of the Universal Decla...
Universal Health Coverage – how meaningful for older people?
Once a relatively marginal issue in the global health debate, in recent years the momentum towards support for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has grown apace, as national governments and internati...
Challenging ageism: time for a Convention on the rights of older people?
by Mark Gorman This year marks a major milestone. It was seventy years ago that the United Nations first agreed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its commitment to the idea that, i...
Social Pensions – a quiet revolution which could help end poverty?
Attention in development debates is not often focussed on the income needs of older people. Topics ranging from emergency relief to maternal and child health tend to dominate the discourse. So to r...