Older People in Armed Conflict, Displacement, and Environmental Crises

• Pages: 31-34
• Date: 01 January 2025
• Published date: 01 January 2025
• Author: Jane Buchanan

Bifocal 46 Issue 3

31

Conicts and climate emergencies are central features

of the world today, with few regions or countries

unaected. More of the world is impacted by armed

conict than any time since World War II, with at least

110 active conicts, including both international conicts

and civil wars, underway on ve continents.1 At least 3.5

billion people live in areas susceptible to climate change,

including wildres, oods, extreme heat, tropical storms

and hurricanes.2 Both conicts and climate change have

led to unprecedented numbers of people forced to ee their

homes, with 120 million people displaced within their

home countries or to other countries as of mid-2024.3

1 The Geneva Academy, “Today’s Armed Conicts,” 2025, https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conicts.

2 World Health Organization (WHO), “Climate Change: Key Facts,” October 12, 2023, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health.

3 UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “Global Trends Report,” June 2024, https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends.

4 The term ‘older person’ does not have a strict denition globally and is not exclusively based on chronological age. In many countries and cultures, being seen as “older” is linked

to circumstances such as being older than most other community members, being a grandparent or showing physical signs such as white hair. The UN typically denes old age as 60 years and

above. This paper refers to older people in some instances as 50 and above.

5 WHO, “Ageing and Health,” October 1, 2024, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health#:~:text=At%20this%20time%20the%20share,2050%20to%20

reach%20426%20million.

6 HelpAge International, “If Not Now, When? Keeping Promises to Older People Aected by Humanitarian Crises,” 2020, https://www.helpage.org/silo/les/if-not-now-when-re-

port.pdf.

Among those most at risk in conicts, humanitarian crises,

and climate-related disasters are older people, although

they frequently remain invisible in humanitarian response

and human rights protection.4 Rapid global population

aging makes these concerns even more pressing. Between

2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population

over 60 years will nearly double from 12 percent to 22

percent.5 The proportion of the population aged 50 and over

in fragile countries, where conict and disasters are more

likely to occur, is expected to rise from 12.3 per cent (219.9

million) in 2020 to just over 19 percent (586.3 million)

over the same period.6

There is no dedicated international human rights instrument

Heightened Risks,

Few Protections:

Older People in Armed Conict, Displacement, and

Environmental Crises

By Jane Buchanan, Director of Global Impact, HelpAge USA