International

We are working to ensure the world's poorer older people can lead active, healthy lives with secure incomes and guaranteed rights. We do this by supporting development and emergency relief work and by engaging with policy makers and organisations in the UK, Europe and globally. Working in partnership is essential to improving the lives of older people worldwide and we must develop a strong age sector outside the UK to achieve this.

Policy work

Our advocacy priorities are to promote age-friendly policies in the European Union; to input into the review of the Millennium Development Goals and to monitor the impact of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA).

We also aim to strengthen the rights of older people by working towards a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. To achieve this, we helped establish the  Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People, which is mobilising broad-based support for strengthening the rights of older people across the globe.

Our influencing priorities also focus on meeting the needs of older people in humanitarian emergencies; and improving health in later life by ensuring older people benefit from prevention, disagnosis, treatment and care of non-communicable diseases.

European work

Age UK has a history of working at a European level, building relations with EU policy makers and enabling older people across Europe to influence change.

We were instrumental in establishing AGE Platform Europe, a network of around 150 organisations that promotes the interests of older people in the member states of the European Union.

We helped develop EU legislation protecting older people from discrimination in employment and training. And we are working to extend the rights of older people through an EU equal treatment directive against discrimination in the provesion of goods and services on grounds not already covered by EU law, including age.

Our current European policy objectives are to influence the EU research agenda to prioritise and fund research into ageing; shape EU policy on lifelong learning in order to promote more opportunities for older people; and make the EU single market work better for older consumers.

We are pursuing these objectives and more in the context of the  2012 European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations.

Programme work

Age UK carries out long-term development and short-term emergency relief work in partnership with our sister organisation  HelpAge International, supporting local partners in over 40 developing countries. We also work directly with partners in the former Soviet Union and the Western Balkans to strengthen the age sector in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Albania.

Find out more about our programme partners