Global strategy for youth endorsed at conclusion of World Conference on International Youth Year (1985).

Global strategy for youth endorsed at conclusion of World Conference on International Youth Year (1985)

A global strategy addressing the problems of the world's young people was approved by the General Assembly at the conclusion of a series of special plenary meetings (13-18 November) designated as the World Conference on the International Youth Year (1985).

Convened in observance of the Year, the World Conference endorsed a set of guidelines for youth by which Members States and other interested organizations are asked to ensure that the Year's activities are reinforced and maintained with appropriate follow-up action at all levels.

The Conference also approved three other resolutions: on promotion of human rights of youth, including the right to education and work; expansion of channels of communication between the United Nations and Youth organizations; and opportunities for youth in higher education or vocational training. All were approved without a vote.

The Conference took these decisions on the recommendation of the Assembly's Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), which considered youth problems, including those related to the Year, from 18 October to 3 November.

Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar told the Assembly that observance of the Year had "set in motion a much-needed global review of the actions that are required at all levels to enhance the status of young women and men and to ensure their active participation in the efforts to strengthen peace, promote justice and accelerate progress around the globe".

Unemployment was "a crucial concern of youth in most developing countries", he said. Another "most alarming" problem was illicit trafficking in and abuse of drugs, which "presents as destructive a threat to present and coming generations as the plagues which swept many parts of the world in earlier ages."

Assembly President Jaime de Pinies (Spain) said commemoration of the Year had contributed to "strengthening the cause of the well-being of youth". While the Year's activities were drawing to a close, "the spirit and strategy of the Year remain, and should be maintained", he said.

In endorsing the guidelines (resolution 40/14), adopted by the Advisory Committee for the International Youth Year in April 1985 in Vienna, the Conference recommended that national committees established during the Year should be maintained to ensure a follow-up to efforts to promote the Year's objectives. Appropriate United Nations agencies wre to be asked to consider youth-related projects each year, and the Secretary-General was to keep under review the "youth element" in United Nations programmes.

In other resolutions, the Conference asked:

* States, organizations and interested United Nations bodies to resolve the problem of unemployment of youth (40/15);

* Member States to lend "increased attention" to programmes to combat illiteracy, urged them to narrow the gap between demand for and supply of educational and training opportunities at all levels in developing countries, particularly in the least developed ones, and to increase work opportunities for young people of both sexes (40/16); and

* National youth mechanisms set up by youth at the national, regional and interregional levels to continue to act as channels of communication between the United Nations and youth organizations, and national coordinating committees of the Year to continue to act as such channels where they did not exist (40/17).

Debate

During the four-day Conference, 103 countries gave their views on world youth problems, a sampling of which follows:

Nicu Ceausescu (Romania) said observance of the Year highlighted the need to establish youth-oriented programmes designed to promote the rights of young people to education, work, culture and information, and to participate in decision-making. The Year had also stressed the need to enhance the contribution of youth to national development, to examining and settling the vital issues of international life, to halting the arms race, to strengthening world peace, and to establishing a new international economic order. Suddessful implementation of the guidelines, which offered "new and substantial scope" for long-term action, would depend to a large extent on the continued functioning of national committees.

Andre Philippe (Luxembourg), on behalf of the European Economic Community (EEC), said a major problem faced by young people was that of unemployment. The EEC had developed a policy designed to improve the access of youth to jobs, and in 1984 had launched a programme to stimulate creation of jobs for youth, with emphasis on vocational training.

Victor Mishin (USSR) said in the developed capitalist countries young people faced serious violations of their social, economic and political rights. Youth was discriminated against in employment and remuneration, and did not enjoy aqual access to education, medical services and social and political life. On the other hand, the socialist system had freed young people from exploitation and inequality and guaranteed to them a broad spectrum of social and political rights. It also ensured access for them to creative work, education, culture and sports, and provided a secure future. the Twelfth World Festival and Youth and Students, held earlier in 1985 in Moscow, had been attended by 20,000 participants from all over the world, who had left with the knowledge that the most diverse problems confronting youth had common basic roots: the domination of monopolies, the arms race and the build-up of tensions.

Othman Abdul (Malaysia) said 76 per cent of the country's population was under 35 years of age. Young people represented "our most precious resources", and were active agents of social change and progress, "a voice which must be heard and a living force which must be properly channelled". Drug abuse by youth was a serious problem in his country and steps were being taken to combat it.

Albert Kooiman (Netherlands) said the international community must strengthen youth-related programmes after the Year concluded, with emphasis on activities at national and local levels. Governments, in co-operations with United Nations bodies, non-governmental organizations and youth organizations, must narrow their focus on youth programmes. Technical co-operation activities should be strengthened and youth-related elements in overall United Nations programmes initiated. Priority themes should be communication, housing, culture, employment and education, all of which had a direct effect on improving the situation of young people. Financial aid must be increased so that those policies could be developed and implemented.

Johanan Bein (Israel) said unfortunately the Jewish youth of the Soviet Union could not participate in Israel's celebrations of the Year because under Soviet policies they were not free. They could not leave their country, they could not study Hebrew, they were not allowd to develop their Jewish cultural heritage and if they did they faced harassment. They were not free to meet the youth of Israel in building bridges of international understanding. There could be no real development without widespread participation by youth, and there could be no real development without peace. Everyone, especially the young, should share in developing peace in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Bouba Diallo (Mali) said for more than a decade the country had been suffering from drought and desertification. As a land-locked country, Mali had been sorely afflicted by fall-out from the world economic crisis. Consequently, unemployment, mass migration and delinquency were emerging trends. Mali had been unable to implement any strategy to include young people in development. How could young people of the third world participate in shaping the future of mankind and playing a useful role in the establishment of a new international economic order when "their very existence" was being threatened by the arms race and by the world economic crisis? he asked.

Alberto Lugo (Nicaragua) said that in the quest for freedom, "Young blood" was being shed in El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala and South Africa. In Nicaragua, under the Somoza dictatorship, young people had been tortured and murdered. Through their sweat and sacrifice, several generations of youth had paved the way to liberation under the Sandinist National Liberation Front. Since that date--19 July 1979--"all years have been youth years in Nicaragua". The United States was imposing an "unjust war" on Nicaragua, the burden of which fell on Nicaragua's youth. But "our revolution has a life insurance, and that life insurance is the youth of our country."

J.K. Kandie (Kenya) said the Year had brought a "great deal of change" for and made much impact on the Kenyan people in terms of understanding the resourcefulness and potential of young people and the problems they faced. In keeping with the country's development objectives, Kenya was stressing particular areas of interest for youth, including education, training, soil and water conservation and afforestation, credit schemes for the young wishing to engage in business, information and publicity on youth development and social programmes.

Wang Shenghong (China) said of its 1 billion people, 300 million were youth. Main efforts had been made to solve the practical problems of youth, including arranging employment between 1979 and 1984 for more than 46 million young people. As China was a developing country, opportunities to receive higher education were very limited. There was "room for improvement" in the material conditions and schooling of large numbers of rural young persons. Cultural and sports facilities "fell short" of the demands. The solution of those problems would require "great efforts for a long time to come".

Hamad Abdelaziz Al-Kawari (Qatar) said the two groups of young people who had been deprived of their rights were the Palestinians and the South Africans. The "inhumane practices" of the racist forces in occupied Palestine had targeted young people in particular. Those forces had reacted to peaceful demonstrations with violence, had imprisoned innocent young people, closed the doors to educational institutions and killed students. In South Africa, the national youth had no opportunity to participate in the social life of their country and were totally deprived of the opportunity to lead a decent life. "We eagerly await the day when they can live a decent life full of hope and with a bright future."

Esther M. Ashton (Bolivia) said "There is not the slightest doubt that youth in developing countries such as bolivia is facing challenges much more acute than those faced by youth in the developed countries." The advancement of youth was "painfully restricted" by the economic crisis and because of the foreign debt, the State was completely constrained from lack of resources. "We have before us a discouraging picture: malnutrition, which affects hundreds of millions of children, instead fo being overcome is being aggravated and that does not make a future generation of strong and healthy young people very likely."

Olli Rehn (Finland) said the Year had expanded the world's awareness of the situation of young people in the developing world, and education towards international understanding was indispensable". Finnish youth had expressed their feelings of global responsibility by disseminating information, becoming involved in development aid activities and aspiring to a more modest way of life. Many major problems young people in developing countries faced were not covered by the human rights conventions. The international community needed to ensure the exercise of fundamental rights of young people to education, vocational training, work and social assistance, so that they could participate in the decision-making process.

Daniel L. Cohen (United States) said understanding among young people was best fostered by "the freest kind of information and exchange". That meant the freedom to associate with whomever one chose, the ability to join student associations, trade unions and religious organizations voluntarily, the opportunity to freely express one's political, artistic and religious views, education without indoctrinatio, and freedom of movement in and out of one's country. In the United States those freedoms were enjoyed by everyone, not just a chosen few. The United States was "deeply concerned" about the brutal treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union for trying to practise and teach their religion and language to their children, and for the young people of South Africa, the victim of apatheid, who had not inherited the right to citizenship in their own country.

Joseph Browne (Fiji) said more than half of the coutry's population was under 21 years of age. For the past 10 years, youth programmes had been featured predominantly, as they would continue to be in the next five-year development plan. Fiji shared with other countries the problems of rising drug abuse, alcoholism, increasing crime and teenage pregnancies. Problems of youth were symptoms of a wider problem affecting society as a whole. Action at the national level was called for and in the long run was more important than any generalized global stategy.

R. Ramakrishnan (India) said the primary responsibility for youth policies and programmes rested with individual countries. Particularly important were education, both traditional and vocational, and its relationship to gainful employment, with the aim of integrating youth into productive work and meaningful activity. Young people--200 million people aged 15 through 35, one third of India's population--constituted "the most crucial segment" of India's population, "not only numerically, but also from the point of view of development".

Nisar Ali Khan (Pakistan) said the young people of today were "the hope of mankind," and must realize that although the prevailing state of the world presented "unprecedented opportunities". Progress in science and technology and in human thought and institutions had created pre-conditions for building a new and just political, economic and social order. Youth could help achieve a new social order by working towards a durable peace, real disarmament and comprehensive development. The youth of the world must reaffirm the commitment of the next generation to the United Nations, whose central purpose was to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.