An older woman being stretchered out of a bombed apartment block in Kyiv stood out among the many heartbreaking scenes from Ukraine last week. I wondered who she was and specifically if she had any family to hold her hand, look after her, tell her she would be OK. I hope so.
The war in Ukraine is presenting huge, competing needs, but the NGO HelpAge International is urging the world not to neglect this often forgotten generation, who are coming under deliberate attack, according to Ukraine's human rights ombudsman this week.
Older people are less able to flee the fighting, may be physically unable to get to bunkers and shelters when the bombs hit, it says. They might not have anyone to help them source food and vital medicines.
Two years ago, HelpAge warned the humanitarian system was failing older people often because it made assumptions about their needs – crucially, the assumption that older people lived with families, when in fact about a fifth lived alone.
Of course, it's not just in times of crisis that older people are pushed to the margins.
Peruvian photographer Alex Kornhuber recently told commissioning editor Isabel Choat that the needs of older people across his country were ignored by the state. When older people were too ill to look after themselves, their families were expected to step in. But what if they have no family?
He said the situation had become "much more obvious and sad" over the years. "Elders [in Peru] are abandoned. We don't want to think about old age, we don't want to look like them."
Kornhuber travelled around the country documenting the lives of older people – their struggles, but also their joys. He said he now wants to create a website to bring the project to a wider audience. This forgotten generation needs to be remembered.
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