Victor Bernhardtz, 22, of Sweden, is one of 21 members of the Youth Advisory Panel that met in UNFPA headquarters in late 2006. A member of the panel since its beginning in 2004, Victor is also a freelance journalist, theatre producer and lecturer. Here’s what he had to say about the meeting in New York:
The first day of our three days together in New York was devoted to reintroducing ourselves to each other and discussing the initiatives and activities taking place since the first Youth Advisory Panel (YAP) meeting in October 2005.
Globally, youth panels are being established in many new countries, and many members commented that they have proven to be a good platform for working not only with UNFPA, but also with other institutions such as government agencies, NGOs and other youth groups. There is a lot of potential in the structure, and with the adequate support, the YAPs can become a strong advocate.
During the last session of the pre-day, we discussed how we could work and communicate more effectively among ourselves between the annual meetings at UNFPA headquarters in New York.
The day started with a welcome from UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid. Ms. Obaid gave us an overview of some recent activities at the UN and within UNFPA, and presented the new UNFPA Framework for Action. She particularly stressed the need for intergenerational dialogues and safe spaces where youth and supportive adults can find common grounds for future collaboration.
Ms. Obaid emphasized that is has been a very active year for UNFPA concerning youth. For example, more national YAPs are being created (now 20 and counting!). She then briefed us on the process of the new Millennium Development Goal target on universal access to reproductive health. Finally, Ms. Obaid thanked the members of the YAP for their contributions to the activities taken place during the year and said she looked forward to receiving the recommendations from this year’s gathering.
This was followed by a discussion on development aid processes in the context of UN reform and the need for UNFPA to promote more investment in youth as one of the most efficient means to fight poverty. UNFPA needs a very strong programmatic agenda to do this. A big challenge for young people within the current trends in development aid is to position themselves and advocate towards government investment in youth and making youth a priority in poverty reduction strategies. The YAP members are in this regards a key partner for UNFPA Country Offices in these processes.
The meeting proceeded with a presentation of the new UNFPA Framework for Action (FFA). Four key areas were on the agenda:
- Supportive policy environment by applying the lens of population structure and poverty dynamics analyses
- Life skills-based education, including comprehensive sexuality education and relationships education
- Sexual and reproductive health services
- Young people’s leadership and participation
The FFA was written by 75 different stakeholders, including about 30 young people. The recommendations of the 2005 YAP meeting were also reflected in the framework, which was of course very good news.
After the presentation there was a short general discussion, and many brought up the issue of the strong focus on youth leadership and youth-adult partnerships. The argument was that a format relying on strong young people requires strategies for supporting young people’s individual development, within autonomous, youth-led organizations. This will have implications that need to be taken care of at an early stage of planning and programming.
Finally we elected the Steering Committee for YAP for the coming year. After the elections we had a pleasant surprise visit from the meeting taking place in the next room – a consultation between UNFPA and stakeholder experts on sexuality and people with disabilities. Some experts from the meeting gave their views on living with disabilities, sexuality and pointed out to us that over 200 million young people live with disabilities. The message was that we must look beyond the disability, instead see the ability and respect the sexual and reproductive rights of all people, including those living with disabilities.
After lunch we broke into four groups, one for each key action, and discussed a prepared set of questions for each area. That group session was then followed by a new group session, now divided by region, to discuss the framework in relation to the regionalization process that UNFPA is about undergo within the coming years. As I come from a country that is part of a community of donor countries, I sat by myself and came up with recommendations for donor countries.
Then we had already reached the end of the day, since the reporting back from the group work will take place tomorrow morning, which is already the last day of the 2006 YAP.
1 December – Day Two
Already the last day! Arriving late after getting stuck in the New York morning traffic, I plunged straight into the presentations of yesterday’s discussions on the Framework for Action (FFA). As to be expected, many interesting things were brought up. Here is just a few highlights from my own group, which discussed strategies regarding Key 4 – Youth participation & leadership:
- Encourage youth participation by supporting autonomous, youth-led organizations and groups, with both credibility and funding.
- Facilitate young people’s dialogues with parliamentarians.
- Facilitate members of the global YAP to participate in UNFPA dialogue with policy stakeholders, including with the World Bank and through the poverty reduction strategy process.
- Create a substantial dialogue with excluded and marginalized groups, to enhance UNFPA institutional knowledge on the various groups’ actual life situations and needs. This knowledge would then guide initiatives and programming (which would of course take place together with the stakeholders themselves).
- Recruit peer educators from among excluded groups, build capacities of peer educators to work with excluded groups and encourage peer educators by providing incentives.
After the strategy discussions, we moved on to presentation of the regional discussions. Running slightly late on the agenda, we arrived at the most important session – listing our recommendations to the Executive Director Thoraya Obaid – just before lunch. And at this point, I had to leave the meeting and catch a flight back to Sweden. But I look very much forward to hearing reports from the other participants on how the meeting ended, and to continue to work with the steering committee!
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