Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how they plan to embed ageing and older women’s rights in (1) implementing the White Paper on International Development published in November 2023 (CP 975), and (2) supporting grassroots women’s rights organisations.
The International Development White Paper, published in November 2023, reaffirms the goals of the International Women and Girls Strategy 2023-2030. The Strategy adopts a life course approach, targeting investment to the key life stages for women and girls to ensure we secure the greatest life-long and intergenerational impacts. Age is an important dimension in our approach to leave no one behind and ensure inclusion. The UK engages closely with the UN's open-ended working group on ageing (OEWGA) and supports UN resolutions on the human rights of older people. The White Paper restates FCDO's ambition that locally-led women's rights organisations (WROs) should be at the heart of setting development priorities in their communities. We include age and disability as considerations in our growing number of partnerships with diverse WROs globally, including women-led Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs).