The humanitarian system and older people: reversing continued neglect

Crises don’t affect everyone equally. They magnify inequalities and can hit certain groups harder than others.

Older people are a prime example of this. Many face heightened risks in emergencies, such as discrimination, physical harm and psychological distress. Reduced mobility, chronic health conditions and limited resources can make it harder for older people to prepare for, or adapt to, emergencies. Many are left without support networks, which can leave them isolated, neglected or lacking assistance.

Between us, HelpAge International and Age International have spent many years working on older people’s rights and needs in humanitarian settings. Time and again, we have seen older people in all their diversity being overlooked, their rights disregarded and their needs poorly assessed or inappropriately addressed. HelpAge International’s new research on humanitarian funding flows confirms this continued neglect, showing once more how older people are left behind in crisis settings.  

By 2050, one in five people globally will be over 60, with 80% living in low- and middle-income countries, many of which will be affected by conflict, fragility or climate emergencies. But the humanitarian system remains largely unprepared to anticipate and meet older people’s needs, uphold their rights or support their contributions.

Ageism and exclusion

Older people have specific strengths and capacities. They are caregivers for children and other adults, leaders in their communities, protectors, advocates and guardians of cultural heritage. Their knowledge and experience are often essential in a community’s crisis response. But despite this, ageism and exclusion are widespread.

Maura in Venezuela sums up how many older people feel: “Older people are invisible; that is, we go unnoticed … I think that we play an important role in the community, because of our knowledge, our experience, our values, but we are not taken into account.”

Too often, older people are invisible in data collection processes. Or data is not disaggregated by sex, age and disability. Without this information, responses fail to capture the barriers older people experience, especially those facing intersecting forms of marginalisation, which limit their access to services and silence their voices in decisions that affect their lives.

Despite longstanding global commitments to inclusive humanitarian action, older people remain among the most systematically overlooked groups in crisis settings. Humanitarian funding reflects this reality. Even though older people’s needs are great, and their contributions are significant, the resources allocated to them fall far short of what is required. Years of chronic underfunding are now compounded by brutal cuts, shifting donor priorities and structural reforms. Protection and inclusion are increasingly being sidelined. Age, gender, disability and other intersecting characteristics risk being deprioritised or ignored entirely as the humanitarian sector goes through a fundamental reset.

Flawed funding, missed opportunities

HelpAge’s research highlights just how stark the funding gap is. We analysed project data from 12 countries where we work, reviewing more than 17,800 project titles from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Financial Tracking Service (FTS) and over 6,000 project descriptions from the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
The findings are stark.

Fewer than 0.1% of projects in OCHA’s FTS database mentioned older people. This suggests there are minimal funded projects that specifically support older people.

Only 6.5% of IATI project descriptions mention older people, highlighting missed opportunities to mainstream them into broader programmes where they might reasonably have been included.
The lack of funding for projects that include older people strips away their agency, undermines the vital role older people can, and do, play in crisis response and denies them the chance to meaningfully participate in humanitarian action.

Strengthening older people’s visibility in humanitarian programming

Donors hold enormous power to shape humanitarian priorities. At this critical time, they need to work with other humanitarian actors to reshape the system itself. The ongoing ‘humanitarian reset’ aims to respond to growing frustrations with the international humanitarian system’s inefficiencies, power imbalances and failure to adapt to protracted and complex crises.

The UK government’s humanitarian reset principles, which prioritise locally-led, people-centred responses and resilience building, offer a key opportunity to shift the humanitarian system to be truly inclusive and responsive to the realities of population ageing. Strengthening the visibility of older people in humanitarian programming would help the UK and other countries realise their commitments to ‘leave no one behind’.

Coverage and cost-effectiveness should not be the measures of success for humanitarian action. The real test must be whether it protects and upholds the rights and dignity of all people, regardless of their age.

This new research shows that, without a decisive shift, we risk failing older people – not only in today’s crises, but in the growing number of future emergencies where ageing will be a defining factor.