Young people gather to review global action plan
7/10/2005 10:02
Ten years after adopting the World Programme of Action for Youth to the
Year 2000 and Beyond, the UN General Assembly gathered young representatives
from across the world on Thursday to evaluate how the plan has
fared.
Welcoming the delegates between the ages of 15 and 24 this morning,
Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette challenged them to help overcome the
world's ills, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, HIV/AIDS and hunger, for a more
peaceful, democratic and prosperous future.
"We are gathered in United
Nations because we know that young people are our future," she told the mixed
audience of General Assembly members and 48 youth delegates from two dozen
countries.
"They will inherit what we create in our time, both good and bad,"
she added.
Noting that almost half the world's population is under the age of
25, she said that they will have to deal with the challenges before them,
including 200 million youth living in poverty, 130 million illiterate, 88
million unemployed and 10 million living with HIV/AIDS.
She also mentioned
the "distressing statistics" that a quarter of all children living in the
developing world are malnourished, as are half of all children in Sub-Saharan
African and Southern Asia.
Hundreds of millions of children are not in
school, and 11 million under the age of five die each year from preventable
diseases, she said.
Among the young people addressing the meeting, Jian
Guangping of China said the past 10 years had brought important changes to China
due to reforms, including new programmes to address the challenges facing young
people.
Progress had been made but new issues had also emerged, such as
intergenerational problems that were both specific to China and also global in
nature, he said.
To fully benefit their young people, Governments should
invest in youth from a long-term perspective and should support programmes for
them, he added.
They should address the negative impacts of globalization
with an eye towards the welfare of their youth, and corporations should step up
and do their part, Jiang said.
He also called on states to work together to
develop a dialogue aimed at helping youth worldwide since they were not just the
future but also the present.
Khalil from Egypt said the most important issue
affecting young people was employment, which created the foundation for a solid
economic and social structure and a better standard of living.
It was also a
key part of preventing the involvement of youth in illegal activities, including
terrorism, the Egyptian delegate said, adding that creating more employment was
a challenge to the international community as a whole, part of the continued
responsibility to development and a key to solving transnational problems,
terrorism, and racism towards migrants.
Sweden's representative, Hanna
Hallin, asked delegations to imagine a world where millions of people did not
die before the age of 20 as a result of poverty, pregnancy, conflict, lack of
health services or HIV/AIDS, and where young women and men were able to read,
obtain decent work with a decent salary, seek their identity without fear of
discrimination, and make their voices heard.
She said young people were being
marginalized when governments did not respect their right to health, education
and decent work, or when they were not allowed to express their sexual,
religious or indigenous identity without fear for their lives.
The World
Programme of Action for Youth is considered the first "global blueprint" for
developing effective policies for young people.
The General Assembly is now
considering a draft resolution on the issue which would urge Governments, in
consultation with youth organizations, to develop holistic and integrated
polices based on the World Programme and to evaluate them regularly as part of
follow-up action on the Programme's implementation.
Xinhua
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