Speeches

Patrick Grady – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Patrick Grady on 2016-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support the needs and rights of older people in developing countries; and whether ageing will be reinstated as a responsibility under her Department’s Inclusive Societies policy.

Rory Stewart

Many DFID programmes reach and include older people, supporting their needs and rights. These include programmes to strengthen health systems and eye care, and specific programmes for the poorest including supporting slum dwellers in Tanzania and supporting widows resulting from the Genocide in Rwanda. Ageing features in DFID country level poverty analyses as a key factor in understanding poverty. In addition DFID is taking a global leadership role to achieve better quality and use of age disaggregated data to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals leave no one behind. DFID’s Inclusive Societies Department in Policy Division holds policy responsibility for ageing.