Inter Press Service - October 7, 2005
Elisabeth Schreinemacher

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette noted that there are 200 million young people aged 15 to 24 living in poverty, 130 million are illiterate, 88 million are unemployed and 10 million are living with HIV/AIDS -- the number one killer of that age group.

According to figures published by the Geneva-based International Labor Organisation, global youth unemployment increased from 11.7 percent in 1993 to an all-time high of 14.4 percent in 2003.

Speaking at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the U.N. World Programme of Action for Youth, Frechette also reminded delegates that 11 million children under the age of five die each year from preventable and treatable diseases, while 113 million children are currently not in school.

"On this 10th anniversary, let us recognise that young people form an enormous resource for the benefit of society," she said.

Adding to the already troublesome statistics was the stark fact that a quarter of all children in the developing world are malnourished -- or half of all children living in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.

"We are gathered here because we know that young people are our future. They will inherit what we create in our time -- both good and bad," Frechette said.

Issues critical to global youth are taking centre-stage at United Nations headquarters in New York this week. Youth activities running from Oct. 3-7 coincide with the 10-year review of the historic adoption of the World Programme of Action for Youth in 1995, the first blueprint for effective national youth policies.

One of the main events this week was two plenary sessions of the General Assembly on Thursday to assess achievements and failures affecting young people today. The General Assembly is expected to adopt a resolution reaffirming the World Programme of Action for Youth and stressing the importance of its implementation.

Youth leaders representing 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, Ghana, Malawi, The Netherlands, Spain and Turkey, came to speak to U.N. delegates. "For the youth, there is an opportunity to raise our voices. We should understand that youth are now very important," said Nguyen Hong Nhung, a youth leader from Vietnam.

"The government and the United Nations are paying much attention to the youth and it is our time to think about this, and to take action and be more active in every field, not only in youth development, but social development as well."

The U.N. also launched its "World Youth Report 2005, Young People Today and in 2015", based on statistics gathered from U.N. agencies, the World Bank and others.

The main message of the report is that investments in young people need to be scaled up in order to implement the World Programme of Action for Youth and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases -- all by 2015.

The Ad Hoc Working Group for Youth and the MDGs emphasises that building the capacity of, and creating sustained partnerships with, young people are crucial strategies for achieving the MDGs that have not been fully recognised by the international community.

"A number of important changes have taken place since the adoption of the World Programme of Action for Youth," said United Nations Under-Secretary-General Jose Antonio Ocampo. "Young people, more than any other age group, have been affected by developments relating to globalisation, the ageing of society, rapid advances in information and communication technology, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and armed conflict."

At the launching of the report, Johan Scholvink, director of the division for social policy and development at the U.N. department of economic and social affairs, stated that "this is the week that youth really takes the center place in the General Assembly, but we should not see this as just an anniversary of the World Programme of Action for Youth, but also look forward to what is going to happen in the next years."

This report takes an in-depth look at 15 priority areas affecting young people that were identified by the General Assembly. It focuses on three relatively under-researched topics, which are youth and the global economy, youth and civil society, and youth at risk.

It also stresses that while poverty reduction is a vital development goal, 18 percent of all youth are still living in extreme poverty.

The research on youth and civil society examines the vital contribution young people can make in decision-making processes, and seeks to raise public awareness of the implementation of youth policies.

Openness and availability of new technologies enable young people to share their views and experiences and contribute to their own cultural development.

The report also focuses on armed conflict and health issues, such as HIV/AIDS, mostly in Africa and Asia, where the spread of the virus has had a devastating impact on young people's sexual and reproductive health. The report also says that many new conflicts have emerged in the recent decades, in which children are both perpetrators and victims.

"Solutions must be youth-informed and, whenever possible, youth-driven, building on opportunities for social change that emerge out of conflict," the report concludes. "These efforts require sufficient funding and a strong commitment at international, regional, national and local levels and must be integrated, involving all sectors phases of conflict prevention, response, recovery and development."

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+Youth at the United Nations (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/)

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