YOUTH CALL FOR FULL PARTICIPATION IN SHAPING U.N.’s POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

By an IPS Correspondent Reprint | | Print |

BALI, INDONESIA, Dec 6 2012 (IPS) - A three-day Youth Forum, co-hosted by the Indonesian Government and the UN Population Fund, (UNFPA), generated recommendations on health, education, employment, families, youth rights,  civic participation, and well-being, including  sexuality.

Held in Bali, the ICPD Global Youth Forum Thursday produced a set of recommendations which outline the vision of young people around the world for their future.

“This has been a groundbreaking engagement of young people around issues they have identified as key to their futures,” said UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin.

“This Forum has provided enormous insights into where the youth agenda stands 20 years after the International Conference on Population and Development (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 recommendations include calls for governments to:

• 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 disseminate 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 Forum also called upon the United Nations to “urgently appoint a Special Advisor on Youth who is a young person”.

The final recommendations will be included in UN Secretary-General  Ban Ki-moon’s  report to the General Assembly in 2014 and will feed into discussions on UN development goals for the next 20 years.

The Youth Forum has been described as 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 Kwabena Osei-Danquah, Executive Coordinator of the ICPD Secretariat.

About 600 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.