2nd United Nations World Assembly on Ageing.

MEETING OF THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2002.

Second World Assembly on Ageing (Madrid, April 8-12, 2002).

Karamanou (PSE). – Mr. President, the Conference on Population Ageing is certainly very important, as it is expected to provide policy guidelines to ensure the rights of older people, their quality of life, and especially to combat discrimination. As Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou said on Monday in Madrid, the fact that people today are living longer and healthier offers the prospect of a new model of life, a new society, where the achievements of technology and science will be reflected positively.

However, this is not the case today. On the contrary, doomsayers of all kinds daily promote their bleak prophecies about a planet sinking under the weight of 6 billion people, about depleting natural resources, about a destroyed natural environment, and about impoverished populations increasing while we, the developed world, are dwindling and aging, while our social security systems are collapsing.

The solution proposed by supporters of Malthusian theory is to reduce births in Third World countries while increasing our own. This is the ethics of the developed world. In my view, the imbalances in population distribution and demographic issues are directly linked to the imbalances in development and resource distribution on the planet, as well as to issues of social justice, education, gender equality, human rights, and development standards. The future of the planet is certainly not threatened by the hungry children of the Third World or by an aging population, but by the consumption patterns and lifestyle of the developed third of the world’s population. That is where our intervention and a new demographic policy are needed.

However, until we have this comprehensive policy of sustainable development that the Commissioner mentioned, we can heed the good advice of those who suggest abandoning restrictive immigration policies and granting full social and political rights to migrants. The populations and workforce of Sweden and Germany would have shrunk if they had not pursued integration policies for migrants and fully recognized the labor rights of women. Strengthening these two policies can temporarily provide short-term solutions to the problems. However, long-term solutions pertain to a fair and different system of economic and social development.