Big(ger) joys

In terms of the youth agenda, the 60^th General Assembly on the WPAY+10¹ took a big dip earlier on the last day. The UK youth delegate [name witheld] delivering their statement - on behalf of the flippin EU - made absolutely no mention of the Policy Document, no mention about Youth-Led Development (YLD), nothing about anything of youth in the achivement of the Millennium Development Goals.

He also praised UNICEF's work, which is astounding considering UNICEF confesses to, in David's (Peace Child International) words, "do nothing for youth, only young children".

I felt, quite honestly, betrayed - as did David, and the rest of the YLD team.

To think I had helped him prepare for his role before he left for NY, in the few MSN conversations we had, when he was just absolutely clueless (if I may say so myself).

BUT.

After.

Oh. My. Gosh.

The Youth Resolution A/60/L.2 was passed.

The final draft included not one - but three - clauses on youth and development. My team had helped draft para 3:

Calls upon Governments, organizations and bodies of the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations to develop strong partnerships to scale up investments in youth and to encourage youth-led contributions to achieving the internationally agreed development goals, in particular those contained in the Millennium Declaration;

But it turns out that the youth delegates in NY went even further than what we negotiated for, and included in paras 4 and 14:

Urges Governments, in consultation with youth organizations, to develop holistic and integrated youth policies based on the World Programme of Action for Youth and to evaluate them regularly as part of the follow-up action on and implementation of the World Programme of Action;

Requests the Secretariat, in collaboration with other relevant United Nations programmes and agencies, to establish a broad set of indicators related to youth, which Governments and other actors may choose to use to measure progress towards the implementation of the World Programme of Action;

The (rest of the) youth delegates' speeches, too, were amazing (those whose countries let them deliver their country statements anyway).

Hanna (Sweden) did a double-act with her minister, and her speech started with these words:

Imagine a world where youth have confidence in the future into which they are growing up; imagine a world where the voices of youth are heard and count; imagine a world where youth get to get their ideas on the statute book - we are moving towards such a world in Sweden...

And Thomas! Thomas' (Ghana) statement made possibly the strongest, most explicit reference to YLD as he closed his speech:

Ghana strongly supports Youth-Led Development and argues that there should be strong partnerships between youthful zeal and the experience of elders...

All the crazy negotiations and lobbying of the last few weeks paid off.

David, who was there to witness the proceedings, left in his email words that give me some reason for hope.

Now that the Secretariat has been "instructed" to create disaggregated indicators for youth - no longer can people like Hilary Benn say that youth is not a separate sector. And the stuff about scaling up youth-led contributions is brilliant. So all is not lost, my friend. With youth like Eric and Sania and Thomas speaking as well as they did - it was an impressive session. One that will live in the UN's institutional memory.

I could almost cry.


Technorati: United Nations, youth, MDG
¹10-year review on the UN World Program of Action for Youth