Spotlight: WPAY+10

After the frenzy of the World Summit, we now turn our attention to the review of the World Program of Action for Youth (WPAY) which begins in 2 weeks in New York. This year marks the 10^th anniversary since it was adopted, and the WPAY+10 will evaluate its progress in that time.

The entire series of events linked to WPAY is going to be focused on youth - to state the obvious - and will be the perfect opportunity to put Youth-Led Development (YLD) more prominently on the international agenda for youth. And it looks like there's a good chance we just might be able to make that happen.

Our country director for Azerbaijan, who was (after much lobbying) placed as a youth delegate, has just received funding from his Youth Ministry to attend the WPAY+10 sessions. We want him to speak boldly on the policy document at the interactive roundtable discussions, for sure. What also really excites us is the possibility of him speaking at the plenary, typically reserved for official country delegations constituting people like Presidents and Foreign Ministers. We are currently working out the strategy for his position.

Another breakthrough: the youth delegates we have been corresponding with, who are in the youth caucus and will be working on the Youth Resolution, have agreed to write YLD into the Resolution. Got a copy of the advance unedited draft (in confidence - can't comment here); we are now negotiating mutually agreeable text that will fit nicely into it.

Now that the Summit has come and gone, though, I wonder if I had made a mistake focusing so much on the MDG+5 instead of the WPAY+10. Was there ever room for a truly significant impact on the General Assembly for the youth agenda, at a platform debating UN reform - one of the most dramatic since the organisation's inception - and broader MDG progress? I wonder.

But it's lucky - to understate - that we saw the opportunity in targeting the youth delegates, and started talking to them early, and got them warm to the whole idea of YLD. It was lucky that the policy document of the World Youth Congress gave us impetus to approach the youth delegates, with some measure of credibility. It was also lucky that the timing of the WPAY+10 gives us a window of opportunity to get potentially really concrete outcomes with the Resolution. At a forum that can actually give us time of day. I hope they do.

I'm amazed at how circumstantial so much of this work is. (And how tiring!)

But damn - I love this shit.


Technorati: UN, United Nations, youth, MDG