DEVELOPMENT-UN: It’s Hard to Be Young in Post-Communist Era

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Nov 8 2000 (IPS) - The transition from communism to the market economy opened up social and economic opportunities for the youth of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but disease, school drop-out rates and unemployment are on the rise, says a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released Wednesday.

The region, governed until 1989 by socialist regimes, is currently home to 65 million people ages 15 to 24.

They are the so-called “transition generation,” and are “experiencing all the characteristic ups and downs of the passage to adulthood, but with a difference: they are doing so in the midst of a political and economic shift that has utterly transformed the world their parents knew.”

Since 1992, UNICEF has been closely following the members of this generation, who were young children at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, symbol of the end of the communist era in that region of the world.

The result of the monitoring is the report prepared by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, based in Florence, Italy.

The study covers youth populations in 27 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which is led by Russia and also includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, the former republics of the now-defunct Soviet Union.

In her presentation of the report “Young People in Changing Societies,” Carol Bellamy, UNICEF’s executive director, maintained that this sector of the population is “clearly benefiting from an array of economic and social reforms that were scarcely imaginable little more than a decade ago.”

“But the fall of communism alone has not been enough to foster the recognition of young people as a distinct population group and a priceless resource,” Bellamy said.

The disappearance of the socialist regimes “has exposed them to risks that were largely unknown to their parents, teachers and other adult authorities, including poverty, unemployment, violence, substance abuse, and HIV-AIDS.”

The editor in charge of the report, Gaspar Fajth, however, said the study leaves a glimmer of hope, as it shows young people “tend to take a more positive view than older people of the changes that have taken place in their societies.”

Though only a third of the young population in CEE-CIS holds a job, “the changing nature of the region’s employment is in their favour.”

“Young people are particularly active in the new private sector, and many are establishing their own businesses… though while they earn less than adults, the income gap in the region is small – in some cases smaller than in the established market economies,” says UNICEF.

Another positive aspect is the reduction in death rates from suicides and accidents in countries where they were previously very high, such as Hungary.

There has been a significant decline in the number of adolescent pregnancies in Romania and Bulgaria, and fewer young women are seeking abortions in Russia, though the country is still the leader in Europe for abortion rates.

Despite these encouraging statistics from the last decade, the UNICEF report states that the region’s youth are not as healthy and face greater risks to their physical well-being than their age group in 1989.

From 1989 to 1998, death rates for this population sector rose in 11 countries, including Russia and Ukraine, but diminished in the remaining 16 nations, primarily in the Baltics and Central Europe.

Data for the entire region indicate that 30 percent more young people died in 1998 than in 1989. The suicide rate grew in 16 of the 24 countries that provided statistics.

Tobacco, alcohol and drug consumption increased among this age group, and seven countries studied showed that smoking among women doubled in the 1993-1994 to 1997-1998 period.

The expansion of HIV-AIDS has taken on alarming dimensions in a region that 10 years ago was one of the least affected areas of the world.

In 1995 there were some 12,000 known cases of HIV in the region, all ages included. Three years later, the total reached 50,000. A determining factor in the spread has been the growing use of intravenous drugs – as the virus is transmitted via shared syringes.

By late 1999, the number of known HIV positive individuals in CEE-CIS topped 360,000, according to data in the report provided by the Joint UN Programme on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS). More than half of that total involves people under age 24.

The AIDS outlook is grim. “There is no sign that the case load is levelling off; we fear the worst is still to come,” said Bellamy.

The UN agency also proposes programmes to confront the issue of youth mortality in the region caused by accidents or violence.

Other initiatives are to provide broader and more equitable educational opportunities, prevent drug abuse, give greater care in the areas of reproductive and sexual health, and apply international standards for youth in conflict with the law.

During the communist regimes, young people had a visible presence in society through youth organisations, though they were often autocratic and lacked genuine participation, according to the UNICEF report.

But with the breakdown of those structures, the young people in CEE-CIS are today notably absent from the platforms set forth by politicians. This gap must be bridged, says UNICEF.