Latin America’s population is ageing, which poses social and economic challenges, for which there is a new Convention. In the photo, older adults gathered in the town of Cuautitlán-Izcalli, to the north of the Mexican capital, to receive information about economic support for this segment of the population. Credit: Courtesy of the city government of Cuautitlán-Izcalli

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

“Our rights are only partially respected; in some places we are given special attention, but in others it is quite the opposite. There is a lack of education and respect for people my age,” Hilda Téllez, a 70-year-old Mexican woman, told IPS.

A few hours earlier, a taxi driver had refused to carry her wheelchair, in the middle-class neighbourhood of Villa Olímpica, where Téllez lives. She said she suffers double discrimination: as an elderly person and as someone with a disability, since she suffered a stroke that affected the right side of her body.

“When I got sick, they violated my rights, because I collapsed in the office due to the level of stress there,” she said. “I didn’t go back to work after that. But the doctors ruled that it wasn’t a work-related health problem,” said the divorced mother of three and grandmother of eight, who worked for over 15 years in Mexico’s public prosecutor’s office, until retiring in 2006.

Because of that, she now receives a pension of only 225 dollars a month, even though her salary when she retired was over 1,250 dollars.

Discrimination, abandonment or neglect by families, and lack of care, work opportunities and full access to social services are all problems faced by people over 60 in Latin America and the Caribbean.“Ageing should be a concern for states, because it not only affects social welfare systems but also the life of the community and the development of countries, and its effects should be anticipated.” -- Sandra Huenchúan

To address this situation, the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons was approved Jun. 15 by the Organisation of American States (OAS) members. It needs to be ratified by two countries to go into effect, and has already been signed by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

The Convention is the first regional instrument for promoting, protecting and recognising the human rights of the elderly.

It creates a comprehensive system of care for older adults, a Conference of the Parties, and a committee of experts who will issue recommendations to states.

It also creates a channel for any individual, group or non-governmental organisation to file complaints with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against an OAS member country for violating the Convention.

There are currently 71 million people over 60 in Latin America. And by 2040, the elderly will outnumber children, according to an international forum held in this capital on the human rights of older adults by the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE).

Sandra Huenchúan, a CELADE expert on ageing, said the main challenges involve improving social security coverage, access to healthcare, and inclusion in the labour market, and carrying out studies on the rights of the elderly.

“There are often problems applying the legislation – a lack of institutional or jurisdictional guarantees that would make enforcement possible,” Huenchúan said.

She added that “there is an enormous range of areas where older adults are unprotected, despite the existence of standardised legal mechanisms. Society isn’t fully aware that older adults have rights.”

The still hands of América Herrera of Costa Rica, a victim of what experts call patrimonial violence against older adults, when they are stripped of their assets and property by means of deceit. The new Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons attempts to address such problems. Credit: Maricel Sequeira/IPS

The countries in Latin America that already have specific laws and regulations for the protection of the rights of older adults are Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

María Isolina Dabove, an expert from Argentina, said “The region is facing multigenerational ageing, a complex phenomenon that emerged with the demographic changes of the second half of the 20th century and is fuelled by the rise in life expectancy, which makes it possible for several generations to coexist.”

Dabove, with the Argentine government’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), told IPS that the Convention is “the first explicit acknowledgement” by the region of the specific problems of older adults.

“This is an instrument that will guarantee the enforcement of the rights of all older adults,” she said.

Between 1950 and 2010, life expectancy at birth in the region climbed from 51 to 75 years, and it is expected to rise to 81 by the mid-21st century, according to CELADE, the population division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

One illustration is what is happening in Argentina, where 14 million of the country’s roughly 40 million inhabitants are over 60, according to the 2012 National Survey on the Quality of Life of Older Adults, while one out of five people in Argentina will be over 65 by 2050.

In Mexico, with a population f 120 million, seven million people are over 65 – a number that is expected to soar to more than 30 million by 2050.

And in Brazil, the most populous country in the region, with 200 million people, the number of people over 60 is expected to increase from 10 million today to more than 16 million by 2025 and to 29 million by 2050, according to official statistics.

“The real, concrete impact of the new Inter-American Convention is that each one of the states must incorporate it into their domestic laws. The Convention should have the legal hierarchy that would make it possible to build a free and equal society for all ages,” said Dabove.

Téllez, who receives medical care in the Social Security and Services Institute of Workers of the State, said she would like special clinics so the care would be “faster and more efficient.” She also suggested that the clinics could employ older adults.

“The government could make things accessible, approve stricter laws, provide driver education, improve the treatment we receive, and apply heavy fines, to educate people,” the pensioner said.

The region could benefit from the so-called “demographic bonus” – a broad segment of young people of an age to study and work and contribute to economic growth – but that advantage can vanish without investment in the human development of this part of the population.

In the November 2014 report “The New Demographic Era in Latin America and the Caribbean: Time for Equality According to the Population Clock”, CELADE said the demographic bonus could be secured with investment in education and health, particularly for children, adolescents, young people and women.

“Ageing should be a concern for the states, because it not only affects social welfare systems but also the life of the community and the development of countries, and its effects should be anticipated,” Huenchúan said.

That concern, she added, “should not only translate into caring for older adults, but in making sure they have better conditions to exercise their rights.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Abusers are often family members, making victims reluctant to report the violence. Credit: Boris Bartels/cc by 2.0

By Chau Ngo
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 2014 (IPS)

A veteran women’s rights activist, Patricia Brownell was still taken aback by the prevalence of abuse against older women she discovered during dozens of conversations she and her colleagues had with victims.

They found that for every one official report of abuse made by agencies in New York State, there are 23 self-reports, with the abusers ranging from husbands, sons, daughters and other relatives to complete strangers.“In many cases, the victims did not want to talk about it. They felt guilty. They felt it was their fault.” -- Patricia Brownell

“It’s underreported,” Brownell, vice president of the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, told IPS. “In many cases, the victims did not want to talk about it. They felt guilty. They felt it was their fault.”

Most research on the abuse of older women has focused on North America and Europe. A study conducted in five European countries in 2011 found that around 28 percent of older women had experienced abuse.

The situation in developing countries, where the socio-economic conditions are worse and the welfare system weaker, mostly remains unknown.

“It could be worse,” said Brownell, citing harmful traditional practices against widows or those accused of witchcraft in some developing countries. “It really introduces another dimension of abuse against older women. It’s community abuse.”

Violence directed against younger women has long overshadowed that against the elderly, who in some cases are more vulnerable. There has been so little research into the issue that activists said they do not know its full scope yet, hampering efforts to prevent and fight the violence.

Abuse of older women can take various forms, from physical, psychological and emotional (verbal aggression or threats), to sexual, financial (swindling, theft), and intentional or unintentional neglect, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Addressing the Fifth Working Group on Aging at the United Nations in New York, Silvia Perel-Levin, chair of the NGO Committee on Ageing in Geneva, showed how fragmented the picture is: the prevalence of abuse ranges from six percent to 44 percent of those surveyed, depending on the geographic location and socio-economic conditions. 

While there has been an increase in reports of abuse and violence against older women in the past few years, it does not necessarily mean the problem is worsening, Perel-Levin told IPS.

“I believe [violence and abuse] have always been there, but they were never investigated, never reported,” she said. “That was always a taboo. We don’t have enough data about violence against older women.”

A long-neglected issue

The issue has been neglected partly because of the misconception that older women are less likely to suffer from domestic violence, activists said. Studies on domestic violence and reproductive health tend to examine the situation of women under 49 years old. The age range has only been broadened recently.

“People may think that older women are not subject to rape, and that their husbands stop beating them because they are 50,” said Perel-Levin. “This is not true.”

For many women, the abuse begins later in life. The abusers are sometimes beloved family members, which complicates the situation, as the victims are reluctant to report the violence.

Living with an extended family does not guarantee protection, because in many cases, the sons and other family members are the abusers. In several Asian countries, the daughters-in-law, who are expected to take care of their husbands’ aged parents, sometimes turn out to be abusers, activists said.

In developing countries, the situation is difficult for the victims even when they report the abuses, said Kazi Reazul Hoque of the Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission.

The older women in that South Asian country most likely to face abuse and violence are from ethnic minorities and religious communities, Hoque, a former judge, told IPS. These are already weaker and poorer communities, which encouraged the offenders to commit violence.

“Even when they bring the case to the court, it’s still difficult for them to pursue ‘the war’,” he said. “How long can these poor people fight?”

Activists have been calling for more research into violence against older women, such as by U.N. Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

James Collins, representative to the United Nations of the International Council on Social Welfare, told IPS, “We will continue to raise this issue during the events of the Sustainable Development Goals. We’re here push for the rights of older people.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at ngocchau4009@gmail.com

For many Japanese women, old age is becoming synonymous with poverty and loneliness. Credit: Isado/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Dec 10 2012 (IPS)

When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Taguchi, a divorcee who lives alone, is heavily dependent on her pension to support what will likely be a lengthy retirement, given that women in Japan live, on average, about seven years longer than men. A survey conducted earlier this year by the Health and Welfare Ministry revealed that women account for 87.3 percent of Japan’s record number of 50,000 centenarians.

“I am lucky I did not quit my job when I married, as was the norm for women of my age,” Taguchi told IPS. Indeed, she is one of a very small number of women in Japan for whom old age is not synonymous with poverty and loneliness.

Most of her contemporaries who were part-time workers or full-time homemakers in their youth and middle age now draw monthly public pensions of just 500 dollars or less – barely enough to cover their living costs.

A patriarchal social structure that has boxed women into the role of caretaker and homemaker is largely responsible for the vulnerable situation many old Japanese women now find themselves in.

According to government data, 70 percent of women leave their jobs when they start a family, returning to the workplace – often as part-time workers – only when their children are older; this pattern significantly reduces their chances of drawing a decent pension after retirement.

Additionally, the fact that women are experiencing increasingly long life spans means that many outlive their husbands and become entirely reliant on the state welfare system.

Social experts here say Taguchi’s sunset years provide a spotlight into the diverse issues that women in Japan’s graying society face today.

“More women than men face poverty in their old age given their (life spans) and lower incomes,” pointed out Professor Keiko Higuchi, an expert on aging populations at Tokyo Kasei University, as well as an advisor to the government on gender and policies that affect the elderly.

Aging in a patriarchal society

Japan currently has the world’s fastest aging society. Experts estimate that by 2025 more than 27 percent of the population will be over 65 years old.

If the present trends continue, experts predict that 40 percent of the senior population will be female: women are clocking 86.5 years, compared to 79.6 years for men.

Higuchi, who is also a prominent women’s rights activist, has lobbied the government long and hard to develop policies that meet the needs of elderly women.

Among the many issues that aging women face are loneliness, higher prospects of disability and growing poverty in a nation that is grappling with a huge public debt and threatening further cuts in social services and state welfare.

Official statistics from the Health and Welfare Ministry confirm this grim picture – government data shows that 80 percent of those over 65 years and living alone are women, mostly divorcees and widows.

Women also comprise 70 percent of the population in nursing homes, with poverty affecting 25 percent of the female population over 75 years compared to 20 percent among males.

The Ministry also reported that in 2011 there were almost 420,000 women over the age of 65 who depended on welfare handouts, compared to 324,000 men.

According to the prominent Japanese feminist Junko Fukazawa, who counsels women facing domestic violence – a risk she says is increasingly common for older women living with their husbands or sons – deep-rooted gender discrimination makes women even more vulnerable to the troubles of the sunset years.

Social traditions that have forced women to take care of the family while men worked outside “is the prime reason why women give up their jobs when they have children, (and end up with) lower paying jobs and financial instability in their old age”, Fukazawa told IPS.

“The situation is ironic,” she added, pointing out that those who have traditionally been the primary caregivers for young and old alike are now becoming a population that needs the most support.

The critical need to focus national aging policies on women is gaining traction around the world. A new report, ‘Aging in the Twenty-First Century’, released in September by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), calls on governments and other stakeholders to take heed of the mounting body of evidence that women are living longer than men, and adjust their national plans accordingly.

The report documented figures around the world that showed that for every 100 women aged 80 years and over, there are only 61 men.

Aging in Japan, the world’s third largest economy, illustrates some of these pressing issues against the backdrop of a shrinking working population, which is expected to plummet from 80 to 52 million by 2050.

For the younger generation of Japanese women, who are coming of age during a time of government austerity and desperate attempts to reduce public spending, the forecast is alarming.

Already this generation of women is beginning to feel the crunch of poverty, with Labour Department statistics pointing to a rise in lower-paid part-time female employment, a trend that indicates an erosion of retirement stability for a large portion of the labour force.

For Higuchi, “The current aging picture clearly shows that Japan’s economic growth policies have eroded traditional family values that protected old people and have been particularly unfair to women.”

Meanwhile, women like Taguchi are moving cautiously down the road. “Acutely aware that I would face a lonely future, I have saved for decades and will continue to do so. At least I can avoid poverty – I hope so, anyway.”

(END)

Robert Brewster, 74, a long-term survivor with HIV from New York City. Credit: Image courtesy of www.grayingofaids.org

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia, Nov 26 2012 (IPS)

When HIV/AIDS first emerged in the 1980s, the stereotypical image of a person living with the disease in the United States was a young or middle-aged white homosexual male.

For decades, that stigma has persisted, although today it includes people of colour.

In reality, though, a near-majority of those in the U.S. with the disease are much older, including those who have had HIV or AIDS for as long as 20 or 30 years; those who contracted the disease later in life; and those who may have had HIV for a long time but simply were not aware of it.

New studies show that more than half of U.S. residents with HIV or AIDS will be 50 years of age or older by 2015.

“So many traditional HIV prevention efforts are targeted at younger adults and adolescents,” Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, told IPS. “They (older people) may not see themselves as at risk even though they’re being sexually active.”

A number of factors contributed to this demographic shift: improvements in AIDS medications that are allowing people with the disease to live longer; improvements in education efforts geared towards younger people in the U.S. about the disease and how to prevent it, for example, through safer sex; and the aging of the U.S. population in general.

“In certain parts in Florida, they have seen an increase in people testing HIV-positive for the first time who are retirees, who don’t think of themselves as at risk for any sort of sexually transmitted disease or HIV,” Graham said.

A 2006 study of 1,000 people over the age of 50 living with HIV in New York City helped to inspire an art project called the Graying of AIDS, which examines, through photography and interviews, first-person accounts of being an older person in the U.S. with HIV or AIDS.

The Graying of AIDS began as an essay by Katja Heinemann in Time magazine, and evolved into a website and exhibit that was featured at the last global HIV/AIDS conference in Washington. Today, Naomi Schegloff serves as co-director.

One reason older people tend not to see themselves at risk for HIV and AIDS is because a lot of public health campaigns are targeted at younger people, both in the U.S. and globally, Schegloff told IPS.

“Cross-culturally, people don’t want to admit older people are having sex,” she said.

The bias towards, and invisibility of, older people with HIV is even reflected in the way data is collected about people with HIV throughout the world.

“It’s very uneven how the age ranges are collected. In many places the statistics only go up to 49,” Schegloff said.

“It’s true at the beginning of the epidemic people would never had dreamed that people would live so long, that we could think of people living 30 years, aging with HIV,” she said. “People are living much longer – it’s a wonderful thing. Some of the people we’ve talked to have had HIV since almost the beginning.”

One of the unique challenges facing older adults with HIV or AIDS is that they may also be on medications for other diseases, which are often associated with age.

“A lot of studies on medications are based on (the premise that) that’s the only medicine they’re on,” Schegloff said.

“Certainly one of the challenges that older people living with HIV are going to have is they’re more likely to have a variety of other medical conditions – diabetes, heart disease, diseases of the lung, other conditions and diseases that tend to strike the elderly. That means more medications to take, needing to be aware of side effects, how different medications interact, because there haven’t been a lot of studies done,” Graham said.

“And primary medical providers who have experience treating older patients (may) have no experience treating HIV,” he said.

“You’ve got the added stigma, if you are living in a retirement community of some sort, and feeling additionally isolated and stigmatised because of your HIV status. There may not be the same types of support networks available for older folks as there are for middle aged folks and young adults,” Graham said.

Doctors who serve older patients may not even think to test for HIV, even if the patients have symptoms that in a younger person might prompt a doctor to do so.

For example, if an older woman complains of fatigue and hot flashes, the doctor may assume it is probably due to menopause.

There is also a category of older adults who are not practicing safer sex. If they are no longer at risk of pregnancy, they may not be using condoms, Schegloff said. In fact, older women of colour are one of the groups with the most rapidly increasing rate of HIV in the U.S.

Another factor contributing to the graying of AIDS is “condom fatigue among older gay men who’ve been practicing safe sex for many years and are finally over it with the condom,” Schegloff said.

One theme that came out of the art projects is the fear older people have of dying alone and how that can be exacerbated by HIV and AIDS, if people’s partners or friends have died from the disease.

Many older people in the U.S. also lack the financial resources to cope well with the disease, living on Social Security with little or no savings.

Asked what should be done to address the graying of AIDS, Schegloff replied, “One obvious recommendation to get rid of the age cap on who should receive education and testing services.

“I would love to see more education among health care and social services providers around ageism and HIV-related stigma, as people constantly send messages that can be hurtful to older adults,” she said.

According to popular belief, the world’s rapidly ageing societies face the risk of poverty, dementia and loneliness. But not necessarily so, says a United Nations publication unveiled in Japan Monday. Better management by governments can support a better life for the elderly, and lead them to becoming important contributors to society, it says.

The report ‘Ageing in the Twenty-First Century: A Celebration and A Challenge’ published by the United Nations Population Fund with HelpAge International, a leading non-governmental organisation, points out that ageing can be a cause for celebration if the elderly enjoy economic and social security.

“Longevity is a triumph of development,” Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund told IPS. The elderly can make a social and economic contribution to society, he said. “Harnessing these contributions will be very important.”

He pointed out that population ageing is no longer a developed country phenomenon. By 2050 nearly 80 percent of the world’s older persons will live in developing countries, making a population of 2 billion, or 22 percent of the global population. In 2000 there were already more people aged above 60 than children under five.

Japan is the world’s oldest country with 30 percent of its 123 million people above 60 years of age. The situation is commonly described as a national financial and social burden. But Richard Blewitt, CEO of HelpAge International, pointed that this status is cause for celebration as it proves the country has invested heavily to promote life expectancy and provide its citizens better health access and economic security.

“Well done, Japan. Older people are active in many ways as growth givers. We need to rethink the value of the elderly,” he told IPS.

But Japan does grapple with important issues that face its ageing population. Three million Japanese suffer from dementia. Abuse of the elderly, especially older women, has grown steadily. More than half of the elderly in Japan live alone.

In dealing with this, Japan has emerged as a leader in dementia care. It has extensive programmes to care for elderly citizens, including mobile units visiting communities. Despite the burgeoning healthcare budget, Japanese social security policies continue to offer health and home care for the elderly.

Experts here commended the new UNFPA report, pointing out that the decision to launch the report in Japan has boosted the status of the elderly, and projected the need for care for the elderly to be brought into the international debate.

“The report has turned the spotlight on re-examining ageing as an international issue,” said Junko Fukazawa, 64, a care giver attending a symposium on ageing held to mark the launch of the UN report. “It is a landmark step in Japan where ageing experts have worked hard to bring the issue from a closed family affair into a social phenomenon.”

Fukazawa said her father died last month at a hospice. Arrangements she made to provide for her father’s care allowed her to continue with her career. In her mother’s generation care for the elderly was the sole responsibility of women, she said.

Dr Babatunde said the time has come to raise the importance of the greying generation in the international development agenda, after decades of ignoring one of the most important global issues.

He called for care for the ageing to be incorporated as a Millennium Development Goal, and for increased support for new research and data collection.

A highlight of the UN report was a global survey that showed how more than 60,000 persons above 60 in 60 countries are campaigning with the aim ‘Age Demands Action’. The campaign calls on governments and on the international community to address the rights, concerns and needs of older persons.

Voices collected in the report of more 1,200 older people in different countries suggest how older people want to play a role in society.

By Jinty Jackson
Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

Carolina Poalo strikes the dry earth over and over with her hoe, her frail body bent almost double. She is determined to begin planting. During the long, dry season in Mozambique, she and her two young grandchildren have eaten little but cassava leaves.

In a country where the average life expectancy is 50, the 65-year-old is considered very old, but her golden years are far from restful.

Instead, life is a constant battle for the many elderly living in the semi-rural outskirts of the capital, Maputo.

Violence and abuse against the elderly – ranging from rape to psychological abuse and neglect – are on the rise, say authorities. Often this is linked to witchcraft accusations, although no official statistics exist about the phenomenon. Perpetrators are often family members.

Carolina Paolo’s sister, Amelia Paolo, fled her home when her sons accused her of witchcraft. “They threw me out, calling me a witch,” she tells IPS. “I only survived thanks to my plot of land.”

It was a bit unclear how she got access to land where she lives now, but she has a plot of land next door to her sister’s in Bilalwane, on the outskirts of Maputo.

“I don’t get any help from my children. Sometimes they dump their kids here when they get pregnant,” Carolina Paolo tells IPS of her two daughters.

The women survive by earning extra cash when they can, working in nearby fields. The five dollars a month state elderly grant, the lowest in Southern Africa, is enough to buy them a one-kilogramme bag of salt. With no access to running water, the money also comes in handy when filling up at a nearby tap – one barrel of water costs them three cents.

Mozambique’s social welfare office is notoriously corrupt and inefficient. Only one in three people interviewed by IPS said they received the grant despite all three having applied for it.

Her body shrunken and her eyes grown over with cataracts, Maria Chambale (70) admits she is frightened of what might happen when she can no longer work, “I must go on fighting,” she says and shrugs. “What else can I do?”

She, like the other elderly in Mozambique, works on her own small plot of land to grow vegetables to feed herself. She also accepts “piece jobs” or day jobs in nearby fields owned by richer neighbours who have land but do not have the time to farm it.

Despite the heady pace of Mozambique’s economic growth – the World Bank expects the economy to expand by 7.5 percent in 2012 – little benefit is trickling down to the poor, many of whom are elderly people.

“Sixty-eight percent of the elderly live below the poverty line in Mozambique,” says Janet Duffield, the director of the aid agency HelpAge International in this country.

For the elderly in the city who cannot grow food to feed themselves, conditions are even worse.

Sixty-year-old Armando Mattheus is amongst the many elderly people who now find themselves begging on the streets of the capital, unable to cope with the high cost of living. “Before I could buy something with the little I have but today I can’t buy anything,” says Mattheus, who spends his days outside a popular Maputo restaurant, begging tourists for handouts.

It is a situation experts say Mozambique’s government needs to address urgently. Eighty percent of people work well into old age in Mozambique – one of the highest rates in the world.

“The population in Mozambique works until they die because there aren’t alternatives,” says the director of Mozambique’s Institute of Social and Economic Studies, António Francisco.

With half its population of 23 million under 18 years old, Mozambique is often referred to as a country of young people. Those who can remember the devastating civil war that ended two decades ago are now in the minority.

Newly discovered natural gas and coal deposits promise untold riches for a lucky few and will soon fuel what is already one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

The aged make up a tiny fraction of the population – just five percent.  However, by the time a child born today reaches 60, that number will be nearly three times as high, according to Francisco’s research. This represents, he says, “an unprecedented demographic transformation in the history of Mozambique.”

Nearby countries – South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho – all spend between 0.3 and two percent of GDP on grants for the elderly. Like Mozambique, they have a young population structure but such an approach can pay dividends.

Japan, which in 2010 registered 38 percent of its population over the age of 65 – the world’s largest proportion – spends over 10 percent of GDP on pensions, according to the International Monetary Fund. And the United Kingdom spends five percent of GDP on pensions, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Studies show that providing state pensions can reduce hunger and poverty because elderly people share resources with the family.

A 2003 study by HelpAge International found that “social pensions increase the income of the poorest five percent of the population by 100 percent in Brazil and 50 percent in South Africa.” And a 2005 study by the University of Manchester in the U.K. found that people living in households receiving a pension were 18 percent less likely to be poor in Brazil and 12.5 percent less likely in South Africa.

One fifth of all families in Mozambique include an elderly person. This is one reason why aid agencies are pushing the government to fall into step with other countries in the region. Another is that 43 percent of orphans are cared for by grandparents in Mozambique. The country has an HIV prevalence rate of 16.2 percent, one of the highest rates in the world.

“Of the 10 African countries with the highest HIV prevalence, eight have introduced some form of social pension or cash transfer directed at older people,” says Duffield.

The government would need to provide citizens over 60 with a minimum of 26 dollars a month to have an impact, estimates Francisco. The figure represents three percent of the country’s 12.8-billion-dollar GDP.

But universal social pensions would be too costly, argues Felix Matusse, who heads the government’s Department for the Elderly. “We still depend on external aid,” he explains, pointing out that foreign donors contribute over 30 percent of the entire state budget.

But the government cannot go on pleading poverty for long. By some estimates, Mozambique stands to collect over five billion dollars a year in the long term from its natural gas alone.

Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, financed its universal pension scheme or “Dignity Pension” in 2007 through a direct hydrocarbon tax. Could Mozambique do the same?

“Improved revenue collection from new-found mineral resources could free up fiscal space more than adequate to provide a cash transfer for all older people,” suggests Duffield.

Others argue that caring for the elderly should not have to depend on hydrocarbon windfalls. “What kind of state do we have that cannot look after five percent of its population?” asks Francisco, adding that nearby Lesotho finances a pension scheme but has no natural resources to speak of.

Few expect a major shift in government policy on pensions before the next national elections in 2014. But in the run-up, the government is showing greater willingness to tackle its elderly problem.

A draft bill, due to go to parliament before the end of the year, aims to protect the aged from abuse, meting out specific tough penalties for violence related to witchcraft accusations. However, there is no mention of universal old age pensions.

Matusse points out that Mozambique will not begin to reap the benefits of hydrocarbons for at least another five years. “Then we will see what is going to happen in terms of social security,” he says.

Luisa Gutiérrez, 65, dances a frenzied mambo on an unusual dance floor: a street in the Nicaraguan capital. Dozens of cars line up behind her, honking their horns impatiently, while she, surrounded by elderly people with canes, walkers and protest signs, dances to demand a government pension.

The street dance performed by Gutiérrez, a former employee of a privately-owned footwear company that has since closed, is one of the diverse forms of protest staged by 20,000 retired workers who have come together in the non-governmental Older Adult Unit (UNAM).

The demonstrations will be stepped up in September, on the fifth anniversary of the start of the continuous protests.

UNAM is demanding the reinstatement of an old law requiring that the state pay the pensions of former workers who did not pay into the social security system long enough to qualify for a full pension.

Some 6,000 members of UNAM blocked the main streets of Managua last week and plan to continue demonstrating until their demands are met.

The president of UNAM, Porfirio García, told IPS that within the next few weeks, they will go on hunger strike in a public square outside the government building, to force the left-wing government of Daniel Ortega to support a bill that is stuck in parliament.

“We gave the best years of our youth to our country, and they took away our right to a reduced pension,” García said. “We don’t want to die without using our last strength to get that right reinstated and at least leave it as a legacy for our grandchildren.”

UNAM, which turns five years old on Sept. 23, was created by a group of around 100 retirees who assiduously visited the offices of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) in Managua, to apply for a partial pension based on the number of years they paid into the system while working.

Under Nicaragua’s social security law, to be eligible for a pension and specialised healthcare at INSS clinics after the age of 60, workers must have paid into the system for at least 750 weeks (14.4 years).

But García explained that most retired workers in the country have not paid into the social security system for 14.4 years, largely because of the instability in this Central American country, caused by war, natural disasters and constant economic and political crises, which affected the private companies and public offices where today’s elderly protesters once worked.

A law that was repealed in early 1990 during the government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996), as a result of pressure from multilateral lending institutions, established a minimum reduced pension of approximately 50 dollars a month for those who did not qualify for a full pension.

Nicaragua, population 5.8 million, is the second poorest country in the Americas after Haiti.

In response to UNAM’s years of protests and demands, lawmaker Adolfo Martínez Cole of the Bancada Democrática Nicaragüense, a small opposition party, introduced a bill, called the “special law to grant reduced pensions to the elderly”, to cover workers who did not complete their payments.

Martínez Cole explained to IPS that the bill was aimed at making a fixed monthly stipend available to former workers of retirement age who made at least 250 weeks worth of payments, according to INSS records.

As of 2007, there were 65,000 people registered with the INSS, who had made payments for between 250 and 750 weeks. But a study is needed to determine who has died since then, who is living outside the country, and who is in need of a pension.

“We are not asking for anything extraordinary, only the humanitarian enforcement of a right established by the constitution, which stipulates that retired workers have the right to protection by the family, society and the state,” he said.

But the bill was immediately criticised by legislators of the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), who hold a majority – 63 of 91 seats – in the single-chamber parliament.

However, Sandinista lawmaker Gustavo Porras, a trade unionist in the public health sector, clarified to IPS that the bill had not been rejected and was under study.

“They (the authors of the bill) do not say where the funds would come from; they just say the former workers must be given money,” said Porras, chairman of the parliamentary health commission. “It cannot be done without a technical study about the population in retirement, the amount of their pensions, where they used to work, and their job history.”

Porras said the Ortega administration has created a special commission to study the demands of the group of elderly protesters, and that an INSS technical report is being drawn up to assess the number of people affected by the problem and the payments they have made to the system, and based on that information, to seek sources of financing.

After the last protest, as a result of which 20 of the demonstrators ended up in the hospital due to fatigue and symptoms associated with age-related ailments, the government, through Rosario Murillo, the president’s spokeswoman and wife, announced that a meeting would be held in the near future to inform the protesters about the study that is being carried out.

According to INSS figures, the government has paid 5,700 people monthly 45-dollar stipends since 2010, as well as providing them with food aid and medical care, and free eye glasses, prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs, and support to their families in case the retired worker dies.

Nevertheless, the government has admitted that it does not have a sustainable source of funds to cover the reduced pension payments, but says it is working on finding a permanent alternative.

Economist and social researcher Adolfo Acevedo Vogl, however, argues that the country does have the funds and economic structure for guaranteeing the elderly a partial pension.

“All that would have to be done is dedicate a portion of the taxes collected above the budgeted estimate to cover their demand,” he said.

According to an official household survey, there were 363,400 people over 60 in Nicaragua in 2010. Of that total, only 55,000 were drawing a retirement pension from the INSS. The remaining 85 percent received no social security benefits.

“In the rest of Central America, non-contributory pensions have been established for elderly persons living in extreme poverty, whether or not they had made social security payments. Nicaragua has the capacity and the humanitarian duty to do that,” Acevedo Vogl said.

According to his statistics, a minimum monthly pension for people over 70 would cost the state 52 million dollars a year. “In 2011, the taxes collected above budgeted expectations amounted to more than 147 million dollars, which means that establishing a scheme of this nature would cost the country just 35 percent of the extra taxes collected,” he said.

And while the debate continues, the retired workers, like Luisa Gutiérrez, threaten to move on from street dances and roadblocks to occupations of hospitals and hunger strikes, even if it means they will be putting their lives at risk.