/MILLENNIUM SUMMIT/LABOUR: UN Initiative Takes Aim at Youth Unemployment

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 31 2000 (IPS) - Today’s younger generations face mounting challenges as high unemployment rates and an expanding informal labour sector paint gloomy portrait of the future, especially in the nations of the developing South.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates there are approximately 70 million men and women around the world, ages 15 to 24, who are currently unemployed.

Women in this age group are especially hard hit by the lack of work. In many developing countries, and even in some industrialised nations like France, there are significantly more unemployed young women than unemployed young men.

This shortage of jobs, as well as other social problems, is especially evident in the growing disparity between rich and poor countries, observed Gyorgy Sziraczki, an expert at the ILO’s employment division.

In most industrialised countries, globalisation is reducing the number of unemployed young people due to the combination of buoyant economies and nearly stagnant demographic growth rates.

But in developing nations, with their dependent economies riddled by recession, the population of young adults is growing rapidly and these new workers find more and more competition when they enter the labour market.

This dynamic, which has intensified over recent decades, runs hand-in-hand with another universal curse that is a primary concern of the United Nations: poverty.

The UN estimates that more than one billion people worldwide live in poverty, the vast majority being citizens of developing countries who live in rural areas.

Spurred by these levels of misery and unemployment, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has drafted a plan targeting the young unemployed population, to be presented at the world assembly of heads of state, known as the Millennium Summit, at the UN’s New York headquarters Sep 6-8.

The UN Secretariat, along with the World Bank and the ILO, are organising a high-level network to promote policies that reduce unemployment rates among youth.

Annan is calling on “the most creative leaders in private industry, civil society and economic policy to explore imaginative approaches to this difficult challenge.”

The policy network should finish drafting a report by October to be presented before the Administrative Committee on Co- ordination, the liaison body between the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The issues up for debate are of a provisional nature in this initial phase, though will likely lead to closer co-ordination among the agencies of the international system.

The youth employment programmes outlined by the ILO, the World Bank and the UN Secretariat are not the only such projects to be discussed in New York.

But the necessary synergy among these initiatives, or between the institutions that promote them, does not yet exist, labour leaders have complained.

The network that Secretary-General Annan has in mind would attempt to identify those employment programmes that produce the best results. Once defined, the UN would throw its support behind those projects’ specific actions and objectives.

The initial outlines of the joint UN, ILO and World Bank programme call for the mobilisation of the private sector and of civil society.

For example, Cisco Systems, a US-based company, has its Cisco Networking Academia Programme, which offers on-line technology training, free of charge, to some 160,000 people around the world in nine languages.

Several other corporations have similar on-line projects underway. The experts involved with the UN youth employment plan stress that such private sector initiatives should be encouraged.

But there are no extra budgetary resources available to cover the costs of the network, so the specialists must work with programmes that already have funding. And they must also mobilise other sectors of society, such as public and private donors.

In his message to the heads of state who will be participating in the Millennium Summit, Annan indicated that potential solutions to the unemployment problem must take into account the opportunities offered by the Internet. They should also pay close attention to the contribution small companies can make to creating new jobs.

In keeping with this idea, the UN has already created a consortium of high-tech volunteer corps, which the United Nations Volunteers will help to co-ordinate.

This new organisation, the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), will provide training “in developing countries in the uses and opportunities of information technology.”

Technology’s potential lies not just in creating employment, but in linking the informal labour sector with the market. Thus it can benefit the unstructured sphere through access to information and to business services.

For this reason, one if the primary objectives of the UN- proposed network is to bridge the gap between the informal sector and the information society.

But the acquisition of knowledge and information will not be enough if the informal sectors remain isolated, warned one expert. “It has to be linked in some way to growing markets. Only then can it be part of a growth or poverty elimination strategy.”