Prakash M. Swamy
UNITED NATIONS, May 18
INDIA is acting as a catalyst in convening an international Youth Employment Summit 2001 or YES 2001 in Washington end of the year to ensure that at least 500 million youths, especially those facing poverty, will have a productive life a decade later.
YES-2001 is a 10-year campaign to catalyse the development of programmes and policies all over the world to support youth employment. While there is universal agreement that youth employment is a critical issue, YES-2001 is the first group to actively seek programmes and policies that have worked around the world. The summit is to be organised by Massachusetts-based non-governmental organisation, Education Development Center.
The Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations had organised a kick-off meeting at the Dag Hammarskjold auditorium in United Nations recently, which was attended by leading luminaries such as Mr. Robert B. Reich, former US Labor Secretary; Mr. Nitin Desai, the UN Under Secretary-General; Ambassador Vladimir Galuska, Chairman of the Third Committee of the General Assembly and UN Ambassador, Mr. Kamalesh Sharma. Ms. Poonam Ahluwalia, Summit Director, moderated the event.
The summit looks at three major areas: Identifying and sharing existing successful practices; creating Summit partnership networks globally and locally in each country to spearhead world and nationwide efforts to improve the programmes and services for youth employment; and helping private companies, governments and non-governmental organisations develop action plans, Ms. Ahluwalia said.
The action plans are at the heart of the campaign. Around the globe, companies, agencies, youth groups, communities, etc, will be asking themselves how they can build on what they have already done and how they can create new and growing opportunities for youth employment. The YES-2001 secretariat will
create templates to help groups create their own plans and will then support and monitor their implementation.
It has an impressive list of supporters and members and its organising committee is chaired by Mr. Ismail Serageldin, Vice-President of the World Bank. Other members include the renowned agriculture scientist, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the President of the Nexus Group, Mr. Esteben Gonzalez, and Baroness Shirley Williams of the House of Lords, UK.
The UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, in a recent address to the IMF-World Bank seminar, reminded his audience that five billion of the six billion persons now living, live in developing countries and that for many of them the great scientific and technical achievements of our era might as well be taking place on another planet.
There are at present one billion people in the world between the ages of 15 and 24 and 85 per cent of them _ nearly nine hundred million young people _ live in developing countries. ``For young people, unemployment at the beginning of their working life can lead to serious problems. Lack of employment lowers household income and blocks the crucial development of skills that comes from work experience and on the job training. Early workplace skill development is crucial to future earnings growth,'' Ms. Ahluwalia said.
There is a connection between youth joblessness and crime, drug abuse and vandalism. High levels of youth unemployment are also seen as leading to alienation and to social unrest and conflict. There are many existing successful programmes and practices designed to expand employment and foster sustainable livelihoods. We will review promising strategies for youth employment and use them as the foundation for the development of a Summit Action Plan, Ms. Ahluwalia observed.
Source : The Business Line. May 19, 2000