Everything you should know about the Youth 2030

The world is young than ever before since human history. It homes over 1.8 billion young people below the age 25. Most of these young people live either in conflict areas or the less developing world which makes their lives hard. Truly speaking, young people face numerous critical challenges which deeply affects their lives including Unemployment, Violence, migration, illiteracy,  bullies and discrimination, early marriage and teen pregnancies, shrinking civic spaces and many others. In contrary, they are at forefront of creativity, innovation, ideas, and solutions to local and global pressing challenges. They innovate new technologies, new housing systems, new modes of transportation, new medicine and many vision for the future. Therefore, the world needs to hear their voice and empower and engage with them, in order to ensure their rights which will contribute unlocking their potential towards sustaining Peace and achieving Agenda 2030.

Youth empowerment and engagement is cross-cutting issues in the all national, regional and global policy frameworks more particularly on the three UN’s thematic priority areas; Sustainable Development, Peace and Security and Human rights.  The adoption of UN Security Council resolutions on Youth, Peace and Security 2250 (2015) and 2419 (2018) became a new hope for young people. It is clear that the young people are at the centre of the planet for its present and future. Fortunately, on 24 September 2018, the Secretary-General of United Nations, Antonio Gutters, Launched the Youth 2030: the UN youth strategy, at a high-level event of the 73rd session of the General Assembly. “All hopes for a better world rest on young people. ’’ Mr Gutters said during the launch event. The strategy is designed to guide and to increase the UN’s commitment towards working with and for the young people towards realizing peaceful and prosperous world. The strategy will scale up from national to the global commitments to meet young people’s needs and tap their potential as the champions of disruptive innovation for development. However, the strategy is ambitious by calling to build new and strong commitments and partnerships by the governments, the private sector, the academia, the civil societies, the foundations, and all other stakeholders.

Moreover, The UN Youth Strategy is equally shared by Member of states of the UN system; therefore, the strategy envisioned five key priority areas of youth engagement, participation and engagement; ensuring informed and health foundations education and health care; economic empowerment through decent work; protecting and promotion of human rights, peace and resilience building. The UN committed to being the global leader in engaging and amplifying voices of youth. It will become a knowledge and innovation pioneer, Investment and Solution Catalyst, and champion of Accountability. These four investment interventions will contribute a full-fledged delivery on the five key priority areas for the youth everywhere. A High-Level Steering Committee which will provide the strategic guidance will be composed of:  the Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Interagency Network on Youth Development (IANYD), co-chairs; a select number of biennially rotating UN entities; and 2 biennially rotating representatives of a global youth-led organization.

The High-Level Steering Committee will be chaired by the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth (as the Secretary-General’s representative on youth issues). They will report to UN Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) and will monitor all UN engagements which is addressing and contributing to delivering the priority areas of the strategy and beyond. The reports will be submitted and presented to the UNSDG and the Secretary-General’s Executive Committee. There will be flow information by country teams between and the High-level Steering Committee, as well as the Regional Interagency coordination on youth to contribute the report. Therefore, the national youth councils and other youth organisations at the national level should closely work with UN country level on Strategy’s mainstreaming, implementation and review.

A successful UN youth strategy needs strong, and efficient collaboration by the young people with UN country teams, Regional and Global IANYD and the High-level Steering Committee. Also, strong multi-stakeholder partnerships are needed to foster and scale up the promising ideas by the young to solve problems. Therefore, a multi-stakeholder partnership, Generation Unlimited or Gen-U, was launched alongside with the Youth strategy which is its first kind to focus learning, employment and employment for the young people. Generation Unlimited was is aimed by UNICEF to ensure all young people are in school, training, or employment by 2030. Ms Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, stressed during the lunch event “we are creating these solutions with young people in the lead. Supporting them as – together – we design and scale up solutions that address these needs.” Ms Fore also insisted that new global partnerships empower the children and young people to create a world full of opportunities. Therefore, the way the world reacts to this demographic dividend shapes the future of this generation and generations to come.

I also pulished this article on the Inernational Youth Journal

https://youth-journal.org/everything-you-should-know-about-the-youth-2030