Member Article

At the UN, world gathered to discuss the future for youth

The UN Youth Forum held in April 2019 gathered young leaders, policymakers and representatives of international organizations and governments to discuss how to empower youth throughout the world to foster economic development, stability and prosperity.

The Youth Forum of the United Nations (UN) Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was held at the UN headquarters in New York on the 8th and 9th of April. During the event, young leaders and other high-profile international representatives came together to discuss generational cooperation, sustainable development, and reducing unemployment for young people.

The forum included several side events with voices from the public and private sphere. Participants engaged on a variety of subjects from the private sector’s role in Africa, to educational paradigms in Germany, and peace and security from the perspectives of the International Peace Institute, UN-Habitat, and Alliance of the Americas.

During the event, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments, non-state actors, and international partners to invest more in young people, to ensure that they are “educated, empowered and employed”. Addressing young people directly, he said “because it is your future, your livelihoods, your freedom, your security, your environment, you must not take no for an answer.”

The first day of the two-day forum involved a number of individual conferences on aspects of entrepreneurship and youth and its role in forwarding the sustainable development agenda. The day finished off with an event organised by the representatives of Germany, entitled “Bringing the UN into the Classrooms”, which highlighted the roles of education and participation as tools for positive change towards the target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs include pledges such as No Poverty and Zero Hunger, positioned one and two on the list, as part of 17 SDGs which cover a wide range of global aims for progress to be achieved before 2030

Much of the events of the second day focused on youth empowerment through access to education and employment and the role of youth as champions of peace and security. There was also a stress on maintaining peace, with an event chaired by the Permanent Mission of the Dominican Republic, “Connecting tissue: young people’s role in decision-making to sustain peace”. Following this event, the International Peace Institute held a conference on meaningful inclusion of youth as drivers of peace, presenting the testimonies of local people from areas of conflict.

With “Empowered, Included, and Equal” being the guiding theme for the forum, the UN Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Morocco held a side event entitled “The role of the private sector for youth empowerment and employment in Morocco and across Africa” alongside the UN Permanent Missions of Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. In her remarks, Ms. Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy for Youth, highlighted the necessity to listen to the voices of young people while millions of young people worldwide are unemployed.

In this vein, OCP Group, one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of phosphate in all its forms, including phosphate fertilizers, presented its vision to stimulate youth employment. “We believe that the private sector has a unique role to play in our globalized world and should endeavor to place the “Human” at the core of its strategy, thereby becoming genuine social impact actors. It is our firm belief that youth has a lot to teach us in this field” OCP Group’s representative said.

OCP Group’s representative added: “Another area where corporations have a crucial role to play and where there’s a strong impact on youth’s opportunities going forward is, for instance, the fact that OCP operates sustainably by preserving scarce and vital resources such as water and biodiversity while promoting clean energies.”

During an interactive roundtable on how to implement the decisions made at the event, Carlos do Canto Monteiro, Deputy Minister for Youth in Cabo Verde, stressed on his end the importance of supporting youth through entrepreneurship, training, internships, and educational reform. He pointed to the example of Cabo Verde, where the government reserves $6 million annually for youth projects, and $1 million for professional training.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sean Robinson .