LABOUR: UN Mobilises on Behalf of Youth Employment

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 16 2001 (IPS) - The United Nations is launching a call for governments and business communities across the globe to take charge of the problem of unemployment among young people, which has been marked by a sharp deterioration worldwide.

Unless action is taken, young people in many regions, particularly those in developing countries, will face declining employment prospects both in the number and the quality of jobs, warns the UN.

The global forum’s secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has entrusted a group of international experts with the task of drafting recommendations to create a network of associations aimed at generating employment and opportunities for youth.

There are currently one billion men and women ages 15 to 24 in the world, equivalent to 18 percent of the total population.

Of that number, 88 percent are concentrated in the developing world, and Asia and the Pacific are home to 54 percent of that sum.

In a message to experts gathered this week at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, Annan stressed that the focus on youth unemployment is justified by the magnitude of the numbers being reported.

More than 40 percent of the 160 million unemployed people in the world are youths. They currently number 66 million, with a rise of 10 million over the last six years.

On top of this disheartening panorama is growing concern about underemployment. “The majority of new jobs created are low-paid and insecure,” pointed out Annan.

“Increasingly, young people are turning to the informal sector for their livelihood, with little or no job protection, benefits or prospects for the future,” he added.

In Africa, 93 percent of new jobs are found in the informal sector. In India and Indonesia, more than 90 percent of women who work outside the agricultural sector hold informal jobs.

In Southeast Asia, 75 percent of the work in factories is performed through informal channels.

In Latin America, nearly all new jobs for youths entering the labour market are in the informal sector and pay wages averaging 44 percent less than in the formal sector.

Under these conditions, “many young people are frustrated and disillusioned – a sense of hopelessness and a feeling of being left behind in the new knowledge economy and networking society prevails,” said ILO director-general Juan Somavía.

The UN-designated experts are working on proposals that run from “sound macroeconomic policies to opportunities for young women, including education for girls and boys, (but) I insist on education for girls,” said Annan.

The initiatives also range from “the need for public-private partnerships to the need to harness the potential of information technology,” he added.

These recommendations will be presented to the UN member states, “but this initiative will go far beyond governments,” stressed Annan. Its implementation will require a “growing web of partnerships to generate jobs and opportunities for youth.”