JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — UNFPA and young people attending a pre-conference meeting yesterday agreed to work together to develop a youth petition and secure two million signatures from young people calling for youth issues be central to the post-2015 development agenda.
The idea was proposed by Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to delegates at the closing session of the Youth Pre-conference Meeting at the PMNCH Partners’ Forum on Sunday, 29 June.
The delegates presented their outcomes document, which Dr. Osotimehin said was admirable but was not adequate to achieve their ambitions of ensuring that youth issues are included in the post-2015 development agenda.
“Find a way to locate youth issues with other interest groups,” he urged. “If you can make yourself a part of big issues like climate change, this will be substantial.”
Dr. Osotimehin said he has a passion for youth issues and getting them heard. In his view, it was necessary to find a way to present youth issues more powerfully in the international arena.
There are currently around 7.2 billion people in the world and about 2 billion of them are young people, mostly located in the developing world. These youngsters experience the kinds of issues that were to be discussed at the conference, such as forced marriage, gender-based violence, lack of schooling, and lack of access to sexual and reproductive health. Among them, the adolescent girl suffers the most.
In one particular country that he was aware of, while over 90 per cent of girls attend primary school, only about 3 per cent finish secondary school.
Organizations pushing for a youth goal in the post-2015 agenda were not getting enough traction, and the youth goal has not yet been accepted. “Young people having access to contraceptives, education, credit, political participation and skills – these are major issues that we need to take forward,” he said.
He then suggested that UNFPA work with the young delegates to pull together a substantial statement on youth issues and present this as a petition for young people to sign.
“I have a desire to get two million young people to say that in 30 years’ time, this is how we want the world to look, this is what we want the post-2015 development space to look like.”
The proposal was accepted by the youth delegates.
“Your creativity and innovation is what will carry this world,” he said. “I firmly believe that this is something that we can do together, so let’s run with it.”
Read Dr. Babatunde's closing statement
