Enhancing youth engagement for inclusive and sustainable development

The global community celebrated the 2015 International Youth Day (IYD) on August 12, 2015. On its part, Rwanda will celebrate this important day on August 22with activities throughout the country, under the direct coordination of the Ministry of Youth and ICT with the active involvement of the National Youth Council. The theme selected by the UN Secretary-General for this year’s celebration of the IYD is “civic engagement”, which underscores the imperative for mobilizing the youth and ensuring their strong engagement in the implementation of the new global development agenda that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2016. As the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon aptly puts it: “The sustainable development goals are for you (the youth) – and they will only be achieved with you (the youth)”. But before proceeding, it is useful to recall the origin and significance of the International Youth Day, because it is particularly pertinent to today’s circumstances. In this regard, we would like to note that the United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution 54/120, endorsed on December 17, 1999, the recommendation made by the World Conference of Ministers of Youth (Lisbon, 8-12 August 1998) that August 12 be declared International Youth Day. The celebration of this day aims at stimulating awareness about youth issues and reflections on ways to address them collectively. It could be argued that when the World Conference of Ministers of Youth made that recommendation in August 1998 to devote August 12 each year for renewed reflection on issues affecting the youth, only few among them could have imagined the full extent to which the challenges and opportunities facing the youth across the world would have become the central development issues that all the countries on our planet would be grappling with today. Therefore, on hindsight, it was fortuitous that the UN Secretary-General full-heartedly endorsed that recommendation in December 1999. There is by now consensus about the point made a few years ago by a World Development Report of the World Bank that the current cohort of young people, especially in developing countries, is the biggest the world has ever seen. Across much of the developing world, and even some emerging countries, young people account for close to 70% of their populations. There is also broad appreciation that this “huge youth bulge” presents both enormous development opportunities for the countries on one hand and tremendous socio-economic, health and political challenges on the other. Many countries were slow to have a full appreciation about the potential dangers that could arise from delaying concerted action on youth problems, notably the persisting and increasing youth unemployment until the initial innocuous suicide committed by a frustrated young man in 2011 in a remote town in Tunisia triggered a series of events that led to the downfall of President Zine Ali of Tunisia and the on-set of the Arab Spring Revolution. We are also currently witnessing the crossing en mass of the Mediterranean Sea by a huge number of young people from Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions in search of better opportunities in most cases. Many young people are also joining ISIS out of frustration with their situations. In the Five-Year Action Agenda elaborated for his second term, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon identified ‘Working with and for Women and Young People’ as one of his top priorities. Accordingly, he appointed early in 2013 Mr Ahmad Alhindawi, a young and energetic Jordanian, as his Special Envoy on Youth to “work to address the needs of the largest generation of youth the world has ever known” and support the integration of young people’s concerns into UN programming. About two months ago, Rwanda was blessed with a highly successful visit of Mr. Alhindawi. The Secretary-General also called in his Five-Year Action Agenda for the creation of a UN Youth Volunteer Programme with the aim of empowering youth and fostering their participation and active citizenship through volunteering: this Programme is currently being implemented by the UN Volunteers (UNV) Programme. The Secretary-General further requested the development of a UN System-wide Action Plan on Youth (Youth-SWAP). The SWAP is a response to calls from Member States for increased co-ordination and collaboration among UN agencies which are supporting youth programming and policy. The Youth-SWAP focuses on the following thematic areas: employment, entrepreneurship, political inclusion, civic engagement and protection of rights, education - including comprehensive sexual education, as well as health. For Rwanda, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on the Youth noted at the conclusion of his recent visit to the country that it has one of the most comprehensive and robust strategic frameworks and concrete programmes for addressing the issues affecting the youth. Indeed, this is another development area where President Kagame has demonstrated strong commitment, leadership and readiness to take concrete initiatives, based on a clear understanding of the great potentials and challenges facing the youth. All this is underscored by the following quotes from some of the key statements President Kagame made regarding the youth: …“ The youth are Rwanda’s future, its Agaciro [self-worth] in all ways, in terms of strength and leadership, and they are the value and foundation of what every country wants to achieve. This is what youth means.”...…“That is why I focus on the youth. As I said before, to be called youth is not enough. The youth are the strength of the country, but this strength can be used in a potentially bad way or in a good way, both yielding positive or negative results. To avoid negative results, the youth needs culture and education; we need to feed our mind good things.”…(End of quote). Rwanda has put in place a strong National Youth Policy that ensures direction and coherence among the various initiatives, cutting across many sectors, for healthy youth development. Many of the EDPRSII pillars have robust components for addressing the issues affecting the youth and providing the enabling conditions for maximizing their potentials. According to the Minister of Youth and ICT, this Policy framework is being revised to bring it uptodate with the new developments, including ensuring coherence with the new global development agenda underpinned by the SDGs. The One UN is actively supporting the country in addressing the issues faced by the youth. Echoing the national policy agenda of promoting pro-poor growth for employment as one of the principal ways to get out of poverty and inclusive transformation, the UN agencies are implementing within the framework of the United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP 2013-2018) for Rwanda, an important programme for promoting youth and women employment. Given the national demographic structure of Rwanda with a high proportion of the population with an average age of 21 years, the aim of this programme is also to support agricultural transformation and creation of adequate productive employment for the youth and women, especially in services and industrial sectors. This should pave the way for employment-enhancing structural changes in the economy to absorb the growing number of young people who are entering the labour force (estimated annually at 125,000). The technical support being provided by the One UN include generating employment and labour market information that can guide sector strategies and fiscal plans. In addition to this, assistance is being provided to both public and private institutions that currently offer business and financial services to small businesses and entrepreneurs. The purpose of this assistance is to help them develop a menu of services tailor-made for young people, which facilitates their transition from school to work. All this is in recognition of the fact that addressing the serious problem of unemployment/underemployment could also help the Government address many of the other problems confronting the youth and help in realizing their potentials. At the same time, the One UN is supporting the Government of Rwanda in its efforts to improve the welfare of adolescents and young people through better education, reproductive health and public health services and other schemes for combatting the various epidemics, notably HIV/AIDs as well as delinquency and drug use. The One UN Rwanda is working closely with non-governmental organizations like Imbuto Foundation, FAWE and a host of NGOs that are doing solid work in addressing the issues affecting the youth. Imbuto Foundation’s approach to inculcating the “can do” attitude and a culture of excellence among the Rwandan youth, particularly the young girls and women is really commendable. While responding to some of the issues faced by youth, sometimes in very proactive ways, the One UN in Rwanda also strives to listen to the aspirations and priorities of the country’s youth for the “Future We Want”. Indeed, during the global conversations that was facilitated by the United Nations towards fashioning the new global development agenda, beyond the MDGs, the voices of the Youth were included as a specific group in the consultations led by MINECOFIN, MINALOC, MIGEPROF and RGB reflecting the demographic realities of the country. The underlying objective was to ensure that young Rwandans were provided with expanded opportunities and space to voice their views on what changes would make Rwanda and the world a better place for them to live in. Through its joint support to deepening democracy in Rwanda, the One UN Rwanda is actively promoting more participation by the youth in the country’s broader development processes, particularly the democratization process. All this is in line with this year’s theme of 2015 IYD, which is “civic engagement”. This will allow the youth to actively participate in the implementation of the new global development agenda that integrates substantial focus areas aimed at addressing the various issues affecting them,On the occasion of this 2015 International Youth Day, I join the leadership of Rwanda and the UN Secretary-General in encouraging Rwanda’s youth-led organizations and other stakeholders to act to promote an even more active participation of the youth in the implementation of the countries robust frameworks and strategies for youth development and in the Post-2015 development agenda. It is also essential that as Rwanda progresses along its positive trajectory of reconciliation and transformation the youth maintain a high sense of unity of purpose and social cohesion to ensure durable stability in the country. Together, using young men and women’s talent, creativity, energy, and enthusiasm, we can change the challenges faced by youth today into huge opportunities for moving forward the inclusive development and transformation agenda tomorrow, which is what the SDGs are essentially about! The writer is the UN Resident Coordinator in Rwanda.

Opinions

Enhancing youth engagement for inclusive and sustainable development