Growing old with dignity, and hope

As you grow old to be relegated to the thadu row, as my mother used to say, you would be appreciating your children's and friend's provision of warmth, food, and material comfort, and acknowledging them saying thadu-thadu-thadu. Then, how would you occupy yourselves with your free time? If you gazed somewhere and grumble about weather and noisy brats and forget to answer, I for one would fully understand you. You would now be thinking about growing old gracefully and now you are me. If the old could live with dignity, that would mean gracefully old. Now if everyone is living with dignity, no one will need yearning for growing old with dignity.

I couldn't quite remember if that was before he left Yangon or after he visited Yangon for the first time that an older friend of mine told me with relief that our brains wouldn't degenerate that much as we grow old. That was many years ago and he was a retired academic who has been living down under for quite a while.

Afterwards, I chanced to read the transcriptions of the BBC Reith Lecture of 2001, "The End of Age" by Tom Kirkwood. For me it was much more than a shot in the arm as the opening words of the first lecture carried so much promise:

"Never in human history has a population so wilfully and deliberately defied nature as has the present generation. How have we defied it? We have survived. Our unprecedented survival has produced a revolution in longevity which is shaking the foundations of societies around the world and profoundly altering our attitudes to life and death.

At the same time, science has made hitherto undreamed-of advances in human biology. The explosive force of these two revolutions coming together lies at the heart of my series of Reith Lectures, as it has been at the heart of my work. Science has new things to tell us about the process of ageing. We know now that ageing is neither inevitable nor necessary."

His series of lectures, (i) Brave Old World, (ii) Thread of Life, (iii) Sex and Death, (iv) Making Choices, and (v) New Directions concluded with these words:

In this series of lectures, I challenge science and society to look afresh at what is happening in our world, to recognise the opportunities, as well as the threats to future stability, that stem from the revolution in longevity.

I challenge the scientific community to think not only of directing energy towards curing illnesses, but to turn increasingly towards the less glamorous but vital task of helping our ageing cells to guard against the drear damage of the daily grind. I challenge medicine to look in radically new ways at the maintenance of health and quality of life of older people. Can you imagine a world in which the first thing the doctor asks is not your date of birth?

I challenge society, collectively and individually, to rethink its attitudes to older people, to recognise the value and beauty of the fact that we are all living so much longer, and to make sacrifices to accommodate those who presume to live on when previously we would have died.

Above all, I challenge us all to put an end to age as something that we let get in the way of celebrating all individuals on this earth as true equals.

Needless to say that any tiny bit of solace and hope you put in our ears about doing away with inequality reverberates, especially when age is not in the way.

A bit earlier than the time of this lecture the General Assembly of the United Nations incorporated most of the international development goals (IDGs) in the Millennium Declaration in September 2000. According to Hulme in "The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): A Short History of the World’s Biggest Promise", 2009 (http://www.bwpi.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/publications/working_papers/bwpi-wp-10009.pdf), the IDGs were a bag of mixed blessing, especially to issue-based NGOs:

For issue-based NGOs the response depended on the treatment of their issue. Save the Children might be pleased with Universal Primary Education and reduced child and infant mortality goals, but there was little in the IDGs for the older persons that HelpAge International assists. Environmental NGOs saw a confirmation of the Rio Declaration and a further acceptance of the arguments that development and poverty reduction had to involve environmental goals. NGOs concerned about reproductive health rights were pleased to see their main goal in the text, but women’s NGOs, and more broadly the social movement for gender equality, were livid at the watering down of the gender goal. For more radical NGOs and the emerging networks of anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation groups then the IDGs were just more of the same – capitalism trying to mask its exploitation of labour and the environment through the rhetoric of social development. But the NGO and social movement response was largely a ‘northern’ response. For NGOs in the developing world the vision of the OECD for the future of their countries and the drawing up of the IDGs barely registered. (p. 18)

Though the MDGs prevailed, not everyone agreed, and NGOs didn't concede without a fight (http://www.rorg.no/Artikler/729.html):

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) build on a set of goals first developed by the rich countries in the OECD strategy "Shaping the 21st Century"adopted in 1996. These were later the basis for a document - A Better World for All - presented in june 2000 by the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF and the UN - claiming that the document was building on the global United Nations conferences and summits of the 1990s. This was fiercely rejected by civil society, gathered in Geneva on the occation of the World Summit for Social Development +5 Conference (UNGASS), who promptly renamed the document "Bretton Woods for All" and called on the UN to withdraw its support (see NGOs call on the UN to withdraw endorsement of "A Better World for All" document). "A Better World for All" also prompted the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Konrad Raiser, to send a personal letter to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressing the concern of NGO delegates that UN support for the document "amounted to a propaganda exercise for international finance institutions whose policies are widely held to be at the root of many of the most grave social problems facing the poor all over the world and especially those in the poor nations"

All these are the feast for the mind if we care to look for them on the Web and read and form our own dumb opinions and share for fun and maybe some use.

As for the missing goals for the older persons in the MDGs, you can't complain because as Vandemoortele says in his insider's story of MDGs (http://courses.arch.vt.edu/courses/wdunaway/gia5524/vandem11.pdf):

... it is common for the representatives of the different perspectives to complain that their focus — e.g. infrastructure, governance, human rights, etc. — is not explicitly mentioned in the MDGs. Their implicit view is that the MDGs are an exhaustive list of all the things necessary for achieving human development. They usually refer to the concept of ‘MDG-plus’ meaning that their specific concerns should be added to the MDGs. This, however, would be self-defeating. If all aspects of development were to be included, the MDGs would become overloaded and incomprehensible to their primary users. (p. 8)

As for who the primary users were, he said "The fundamental purpose of the MDGs is not for each and every country to meet the global targets, which would be utopian. Their ultimate aim is to help align national priorities with the MDG agenda so as to foster human well-being. Therefore, the intended users are primarily politicians, parliamentarians, preachers, teachers and journalists." If so, you may wonder where does the people stand. Are they to be fed through politicians, parliamentarians, preachers, teachers and journalists only?

In our society, there's nothing much to talk and think about caring for our own children (as if granting the loan) and our parents (as if paying our debt), and also for helping other relatives within our capacity. The parrot king in Sālikedāra-Jātaka said this for us all (translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 1901):

"My callow chicks, my tender brood, whose wings are still ungrown,
Who shall support me by and bye: to them I grant the loan.

"Then my old ancient parents, who far from youth's bounds are set,
With that within my beak I bring, to them I pay my debt.

"And other birds of helpless wing, and weak full many more,
To these I give in charity: this sages call my store.

"This is that loan the which I grant, this is the debt I pay,
And this the treasure I store up: now I have said my say."

That means so long as we keep our values like these and our bread winners are healthy and have equal opportunities no elderly or anyone, needs to worry, as least for meeting our most basic needs. We have seen that the crucial element for our workforce to be able to "paying their debt and granting their loans" would depends on effectively meeting the sub-goal "Achieve Decent Employment for Women, Men, and Young People" of the goal-1 of the Millennium Development Goals: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger.  For that and other entitlements and obligations to our people we hoped that our national aspirations as formulated and implemented by our leaders would largely have been in line with the MDGs and their achievements accumulated by the end of 2015 would be decent or better.

Reporting to the Sixty-Eight session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary General in his report "A life of dignity for all: accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and advancing the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015" in July 2013, while acknowledging that more than a billion people still live in extreme poverty and far too many people face serious deprivation in health and education, with progress hampered by significant inequality related to income, gender, ethnicity, disability, age and location he was optimistic. He said "Ours is the first generation with the resources and know-how to end extreme poverty and put our planet on a sustainable course before it is too late" and pointed out that the transition to sustainable development as underscored in the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012 is the key to post-2015 development agenda.

I noticed that this report mentioned something about the elderly: under paragraph 92. "Address demographic challenges" we find "... Countries with an ageing population need policy responses to support the elderly so as to remove barriers to their full participation in society while protecting their rights and dignity". I was glad particularly because the Secretary General seemed to count on us through these words: their full participation in society. But I have doubts whether the qualifier "countries with an ageing population" would give the ground for the excuse to ignore the elderly for countries with relatively low expectation of life like ours.

Equality of opportunity is the key ingredient for leaving no one behind (presumably including the elderly) and paragraph 84. Tackle exclusion and inequality says:  "In order to leave no one behind and bring everyone forward, actions are needed to promote equality of opportunity. This implies inclusive economies in which men and women have access to decent employment, legal identification, financial services, infrastructure and social protection, as well as societies where all people can contribute and participate in national and local governance".

With the MDG's deadline at the end of 2015 in sight, the feverish preparations for the post-2015 agenda has been crowned with the UN Secretary General's long awaited synthesis report: The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet came out in December 4, 2014. The road to dignity relies on six essential elements of delivering the sustainable development goals:

In their letter to the UN Secretary General from the Co-Chairs of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda of 30 May 2013 the Panel stated: "We transmit our recommendations to you with a feeling of great optimism that a transformation to end poverty through sustainable development is possible within our generation". For the common people from a developing country like you and me, these respectable leaders sound sincere and convincing. If they feel comfortable with the post-2015 development agenda, why shouldn't we? Granted that their visionary judgment is right and all the sources from which the Secretary General drew to synthesize his Road to Dignity by 2030 deliberations were reliable we won't risk too much in hoping that poverty could indeed be eradicated from this world "within our generation". To simplify matters I would prefer to think of this time frame as "in my lifetime".

But that's a tall order. The catch is that only each of the nations itself could make that happen through political will and mobilizing certain level of its own capacity. The latter requisite could be augmented through global solidarity and partnership, though.

The SDGs deliberated in the Road to Dignity by 2030 report still awaits final agreement of the states and almost immediately there were interesting reactions to it from the global community. An issue that interested me much is the definition of "dignity". I managed to find only one instance of questioning means for achieving dignity. He doubted the report's suggestion that dignity could be attained by ending poverty and fighting inequality, and asked "... will they result in dignity for all? Or will aiming for dignity for all help end poverty and inequality?".  He also believed that the poor could possess dignity. For me, ending poverty and fighting inequality are essential for bestowing dignity but the "Justice" element will be needed to consolidate it. I also like to see that hopes are kept alive to complete my vision on dignity.

Here are some from the Beyond-2015 reaction (http://www.salo.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Beyond-2015-Reaction-to-the-SG-Synthesis-Report.pdf):

The report recognizes the need to “remove obstacles to full participation by persons with disabilities, older persons, adolescents and youth, and empower the poor” (Para 68) but still treats people more as recipients of development than active agents and drivers of change.

On sustainability and economic growth, we are concerned that the Secretary-General appears to underscore the need to retain an approach based on economic growth as the solution to our global challenges, rather than recognizing that it has created or contributed to many of those challenges. We recognize though that the report does mention the need for the economy to serve people and planet. The real transformation of our economies (Para 54) will only be achieved if we take a path that addresses inequity and environmental and social costs of business-as-usual, measures progress “beyond GDP” and complies with human rights obligations.

Goals, Targets and Indicators

... Progress must be measured in ways that “go beyond GDP and account for human well-being, sustainability and equity” (Para 72). Availability and access to data, including disaggregated information (Para 46) are key concerns, and the report still misses the active participation of people. Instead of referring to a world where everyone counts, the vision is a world where everyone ‘is counted’ (Para 31).

A Participatory accountability, monitoring and review mechanism

... The section on monitoring, evaluation and reporting falls short on citizens' (including children and youth) participation and presents citizens largely as beneficiaries than active actors in the implementation and accountability.

Most of us are aware of year 2015 as the landmark year for our national elections to be held as a step towards advancing further in our quest for a fully democratic society. Quite a few would have known that the global development agenda based on MDGs would expire by this year's end and the Post-2015 development agenda based on Sustainable Development Goals will take over from then on.

Obviously, neither one should distract the other.  They could be mutually reinforcing and harmonious. The political awakening we are gaining from the election process may be directed to reinforce the heightened awareness and resolution for national progress in working with the still unfinished business of the MDGs and the UN Post-2015 development agenda, and the other way round.