Statement delivered at the United Nations Open Ended Working Group on Ageing, New York. April 3rd, 2023. On achieving the rights of older persons; adopting decades of success stories and lessons learnt from HIV PEPFAR program in Nigeria

1. Statement at UN Open Ended Working Group on Ageing, New York. April 3rd
, 2023
Madam Chair, distinguished member state representatives and everyone present here, good evening.
My name is Dr. Amara Frances Chizoba, Director of Mission to Elderlies Foundation, an NGO working to
take medicine and mission to older persons in Nigeria. I am also an Executive Member representing
Coalition of Societies for Rights of older persons in Nigeria (COSROPIN).
Thank you for having me and the opportunity to speak.
My Statement is on achieving the rights of older persons; adopting decades of success stories and
lessons learnt from HIV PEPFAR program in Nigeria
As a team, the UN open ended working group on ageing need to take a universal and harmonized
approach to measure progress being made after a decade of deliberations. Thus need for my
contribution. Like we know, every program must have a goal. In this case our goal here is to achieve
rights of older persons, and member states today have extensively spoken on their commitment and
actions to achieve that goal.
However, every goal must have a commensurate monitoring and evaluation plan expressed in
measurable indicators. During this kind of important meeting, the member states can and should thus
include in their statement, status of achievements of the key indicators in numerical and percentage
form.
This approach helps us as a team gathered here, to objectively track our collective efforts to achieving
these goal in milestones. And subsequently, other member states and groups will learn from each other
on best practices especially from best performing member states.
This is a lesson learnt from US PEPFAR funded program in Nigeria that moved achievement of its goal
from ground zero to over 90% as commended by CDC and UNAIDS.
Therefore, side events should include workshops of developing and using indicators to track our
progress which shows our success stories as a body.
Once again, thank you and God bless you.