A draft law that was yesterday approved by the Chamber of Deputies is set to narrow the age bracket for the youth to between 16 and 30 years, instead of the current 14-35 years. 

The newly proposed age bracket for the youth will help empower young people and make them responsible early enough, MP Justine Mukobwa, who represents the youth in Parliament has said.

"In terms of empowerment, the government will be focusing on the real people who need to be empowered. At 35, people are already in the working class but those who are 30 and below need more support and orientation,” she said yesterday.

A new draft law approved by Parliament on Wednesday narrows the age bracket of the youth in the country to 16-30 years.

According to government, the move to trim the bracket from 14-35 years aimed at ,among others, streamline the different interventions designed to empower the youth and make them more focused.

The new age bracket is one of the provisions in the law that determines the mission, organisation and functioning of the National Youth Council.

MP Mukobwa also explained that with the age bracket to be considered as youthnarrowed, more people will take responsibility at an earlier age because they won’t be feeling too young anymore.

"The new definition will somehow change people’s mindset. It will help them to understand that they should be responsible at an early age because after 30 you are no longer considered a young person,” the 28-year-old MP told The New Times.

The new age bracket means that those in the youth category in the country will now be about 30 per cent of the population while the previous age bracket constituted 39 per cent of the population.

"The focus of the government is to empower the youth in terms of training and work opportunities. That’s why we want to focus on young people who are still in the transition from school to work,” the Minister for Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, told The New Times.

He said that under the old law, someone at 14 years was too young to discuss work-related issues while 35 year olds were also too old to be empowered in terms of training.

Internationally, age brackets for the youth vary, with the United Nations setting its standard at 15-24 years, the African Union terms youth as those who are between 14 and 35 years of age, while the Commonwealth Group defines youth as those who are between 15 and 29.

Rwanda is a member of all the three organisations and had to choose its own definition of the youth depending on its needs, Nsengimana explained.

Rwanda, therefore, chose an age bracket that would help to address needs of work and training for a section of the population that needs it most, he said.

"We chose what suits our context. We want to sensitise our youth to work and develop themselves, be self-reliant and improve their lives,” he said.

The draft law determining the mission, organisation and functioning of the National Youth Council once, gazetted will repeal the existing one passed in 2003 and revised in 2006, which the government said needed to be reformed to help the National Youth Council meet its mission to empower the youth.

The youth are represented in the National Youth Council from the village level up to the national level.

The draft law says that the National Youth Council is required to work together with other administrative entities in the country to promote the youth.

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