Asghar Zaidi

Within the framework of the 2012 European Year, Professor Zaidi coordinated the Active Ageing Index Project at European Centre Vienna, and he continued leading this work in the second phase of the AAI project during 2014-2015.
During 2013, working with HelpAge International, he developed the first-ever index to measure the wellbeing of older people on a worldwide scale, called the Global AgeWatch Index.

During 2014, he contributed a background paper to UNDP’s 2014 Human Development Report, titled ‘Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience’.

During 2013-2017, he will be one of the lead researchers in the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme Project MOPACT (Mobilising the Potential of Active Ageing).

During 2015-2016, he will be the Principal Investigator of the newly funded ESRC project ‘Understanding quality of life and well-being of older people – Case studies of China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh’, in partnership with HelpAge International.

He has been one of the international experts advising WHO’s Centre for Health Development in Kobe, Japan, in developing indicators for WHO’s network of age-friendly cities. He provided advice during the very first expert consultation in St Gallen, Switzerland (in August 2012) and then in the second expert consultation meeting (in Québec City, Canada, in September 2013).

He contributed to UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs the Expert Group Meeting on “Global ageing and the data revolution - the way forward in the post-2015 environment” in New York on 7-9 July 2015.

He was the key speaker at the sixth working session of the UN Open Ended Working Group on Ageing, New York, 16 July 2015.