Promoting youth engagement

Milinda RAJAPAKSHA

The recommendations of The Global Youth Forum

* Provide , monitor and evaluate universal access to a basic package of youth-friendly health services (including mental healthcare and sexual and reproductive health services) that are high quality, integrated, equitable, comprehensive and affordable

* Ensure universal access to free, quality comprehensive education at all levels, and allocate sufficient funds to achieve universal access to comprehensive education.

* Eliminate harmful traditional practices (such as forced circumcision and genital mutilation, early and forced marriage, gender-based violence and violence against women.

* Guarantee an environment free from psychological, physical and sexual violence, including gender based violence and bullying in the home, school, workplace and community.

* Develop and strengthen multi-stakeholder partnerships to collect, analyze, use and dis seminate reliable, disaggregated, qualitative and quantitative youth data to support evidence-based national youth health policies and programmes.

* Prioritize creation of jobs and a skilled workforce by increased investment, along with the private sector, in programmes that foster youth entrepreneurship and job training including paid internships.

* Ensure equal and equitable access to decent work free from discrimination, respectful of diversity and promoting human development for all young people, particularly young women with children and other marginalized groups.

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Global Youth Forum concluded in Bali, recently producing a set of recommendations which outlined the vision of young people around the world for their future.

Three delegates representing National Youth Services Council, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development and World Girl Guide Association attended on behalf of Sri Lanka. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and National Youth Services Council also organized a virtual conference for 50 selected young people in Colombo.

Six hundred youth leaders from more than 130 countries attended the Forum, with over 2500 virtual delegates participating online. Representatives of governments, UN agencies, non-governmental and private sector organizations also took part.

“This has been a groundbreaking engagement of young people around issues they have identified as key to their future,” said UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin. “This Forum has provided enormous insights into where the youth agenda stands twenty years after the International Conference on ICPD.

The world has changed dramatically since then, and so have young people. I have been inspired by their passion and their vision for their future, and I am determined that UNFPA will continue to lead the UN system in ensuring that this vision is fully incorporated into the discussions and design of the next development agenda.”

The three-day Forum, co-hosted by the Indonesian Government and the UN Population Fund, UNFPA, generated recommendations on health, education, employment, families, youth rights, civic participation, well-being including sexuality.

The Forum also called upon the United Nations to “urgently appoint a Special Advisor on Youth who is a young person.” The final recommendations from the Forum will be included in a UN Secretary-General report to the General Assembly in 2014 and will feed into discussions on UN development goals for the next 20 years.

The Global Youth Forum is part of a formal UN process to review progress, gaps and challenges in achieving the objectives of the Programme of Action of the 1994 ICPD.

The ICPD was a landmark event that made a fundamental connection between advancing the rights and health of young people, in particular young women, and delivering effective, sustainable development.

The Forum is the first of three thematic meetings to review progress and produce recommendations. The two other global meetings will focus on Human Rights and Women and will be held in 2013.

“It is our hope that this Forum, in addition to producing substantive recommendations will also generate the momentum for ongoing youth engagement globally, regionally and nationally to support and advance the aspirations of young people and their communities in the post-2015 agenda,” explained Executive Coordinator of the ICPD Secretariat, Kwabena Osei-Danquah.