Youth Leaders Advise UNFPA on their Generation's Rights and Needs

UNITED NATIONS, New York – A group of young people from around the world will advise UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, on the best ways to recognize and promote the rights and needs of youth within national development plans. The group will also ensure that UNFPA’s global initiatives are youth-friendly and adequately address young people’s concerns, particularly regarding their sexual and reproductive lives, HIV/AIDS and gender issues and their link with issues of livelihood.

The Youth Advisory Committee was formulated during a two-day meeting in New York, where more than 20 representatives of national, regional and international youth networks voiced their opinions on how to better integrate adolescents and youth in UNFPA’s programmes and initiatives. The meeting, held from 15 to16 April, also provided the participants with an opportunity to discuss the challenges they faced in implementing their projects, in working with adults and in dealing with other youth.

“We need you and your ideas because the difference between our world today and tomorrow rests with you,” said UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid at the meeting. “In a sense, you are a parliament giving us your views and your constituencies’ views.”

Setting up the new advisory body would reflect UNFPA’s longstanding commitment to young people’s reproductive health rights and needs. The Youth Advisory Committee will encourage and empower young people to speak about their concerns and issues. It will also provide a forum for UNFPA to exchange ideas with young people and groups serving them, and receive advice on how to better address their needs. It will identify emerging trends in young people’s reproductive health and rights and allow them to participate in decisions affecting programmes that address their issues.

“The group will ensure that young people’s reproductive rights are recognized in all development efforts,” said Upeka De Silva, a young participant from the International Planned Parenthood Federation. “The process of involving young people in programmes benefiting them is, for me, as important as the end itself,” she added.

Another participant, Ishmael Selassie Gbedzeha, from the African Youth Alliance in Ghana, said: “Harnessing the emerging youth culture into UNFPA work should produce positive results and avoid any potential conflicts.” What makes this Committee powerful, he added, “is the diverse backgrounds of its members, which will contribute to the success of the Fund’s activities with the youth.”

Ms. Obaid asked participants to focus on three youth-related topics: culture, HIV/AIDS, and married adolescents. Noting that today’s youth are caught between traditional views and a rapidly expanding global modern culture, she asked participants to consider how to build bridges between their own cultures and those of their parents, families and communities.

With an estimated 6,000 young people getting infected with HIV/AIDS every single day, Ms. Obaid asked the group for advice on how to better promote gender equality so that girls and boys can respect and support each other. Ms. Obaid described early marriage as an abuse of rights, saying that the majority of sexually active adolescents are married. Often, however, their needs are not recognized, with no reproductive health services to address their specific needs as married adolescents.

She also indicated that girls are often married young, sometimes as early as 10 years old. “Perhaps we need to ask parents and families of married girls and the girls themselves about their own needs,” said Ms. Obaid, “but I would like to hear your views about what strategies can work to reach them and provide them with appropriate services.”

Last week’s meeting included participants from developed and developing countries representing over 100 million young people worldwide. The selection of the Committee members, who will be invited to serve for a maximum of two years, will be based on their commitment to the principles of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, especially to young people’s reproductive health and rights. While the Committee will meet annually, its members will maintain constant communications among themselves through an e-forum.

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UNFPA is the world’s largest multilateral source of population assistance. Since it became operational in 1969, the Fund has provided sustained assistance to developing countries to address their population and development needs.

Contact information:

Omar Gharzeddine
Tel.: +1 (212) 297-5028
Email: gharzeddine@unfpa.org