Yearnings of the Young.

"Demography is not destiny, but this is a formidable challenge -- not so much because of the sheer number of people as because of the context of poverty and deprivation in which they will have to live unless we take decisive action now. If I had one wish for the new millennium, it would be that we treat this challenge as an opportunity for all, not a lottery in which most of us will lose. Young people are a source of creativity, energy and initiative, of dynamism and social renewal. They learn quickly and adapt readily. Given the chance to go to school and find work, they will contribute hugely to economic development and social progress."

MORE THAN ONE BILLION people today are between the ages of 15 and 24; in fact, nearly 40% of the world's population is below the age of 20.

MANY OF THEM already are, or are about to start, having children of their own. Most of the resulting youth bulge--nearly 98 percent--will occur in the developing world.

THE MAJORITY OF the world's children are in school, but more than 130 million primary school-age children in developing countries are not.

PROVIDING PRIMARY EDUCATION for them would add an estimated $7 billion a year to educational costs over a 10-year period.

ABOUT 60% OF CHILDREN not in school are girls; female enrolment in rural areas remains shockingly low. The gap between boys and girls is significant in 47 countries, even at the primary level. In some cases, efforts to increase overall enrolments have widened it.

A QUARTER OF A BILLION CHILDREN under 14, in and out of school, work often in hazardous conditions--in urban sweatshops, cleaning shoes on the street; in dangerous mine shafts--and, in distressing numbers, bonded or sold into sexual services. According to ILO estimates, 60 million young people cannot find work; about 80% of them are in developing countries and economies in transition.

THOSE IN THE 15 TO 24 AGE group are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as adults; in some developing countries the ratio is higher.

YOUNG WORKERS are also more likely than older ones to be last hired, first fired, and they are less likely to be protected by legislation.

POLICIES TARGETED at young people, including preferential hiring, have proved largely unsuccessful because they simply are economically unsustainable.

LOW-GROWTH ECONOMIES cannot generate sufficient employment opportunities to hire their own young people. And this failure, in turn, further depresses growth and perpetuates poverty. No one has yet discovered any easy or obvious solutions to this self-perpetuating cycle.

What We The Peoples Can Do

Endorse the objectives of demonstrably narrowing the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005 and of ensuring that by 2015 all children complete a full course of primary education.

Ensure that Member States fully implement the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

Generate employment opportunities for young women which will spur their need for education and establish national strategies and plans to this end, sustained by international financial support.

Overcome the difference between household priorities, which see girls as a source of free domestic labour, and those of society at large.

Devising New Strategies

Together with the heads of the World Bank and the ILO, Secretary-General Kofi Annan is convening a high-level policy network on youth employment-drawing on the most creative leaders in private industry, civil society and economic policy to explore "out of the box" approaches to this difficult challenge. He will ask this policy network to propose a set of recommendations that he can convey to world leaders within a year.

Specifically in the context of work conditions, although with a far larger scope, an important initiative launched by the Secretary-General early last year is the Global Compact, a joint undertaking of the ILO, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Compact seeks to engage corporations in the promotion of equitable labour standards, respect for human rights and the protection of the environment. Corporations are asked to translate commitments to general principles in these three areas into concrete management practices.

What informs the Compact? Simply put, it is based on the conviction that weaving universal values into the fabric of global markets and corporate practices will help advance broad societal goals, while also securing open markets.

To help pursue this ambitious agenda, the Global Compact team at the United Nations has created a Web site (http://unglobalcompact.org) that provides information on the Compact and access to extensive United Nations country-base data banks. It describes corporate best practices in the three areas and promotes dialogue on supportive partnership programmes. The Compact Initiative has been endorsed by a wide variety of business associations, labour groups and NGOs, and the Secretary-General hopes soon to announce the first business leaders how are joining to make it an everyday reality, allowing global companies at relatively little, if any, cost to themselves to apply good practices in their own corporate domains everywhere they operate.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), with other United Nations partners, has developed an initiative at primary and secondary levels to close the education gender gap and assure that access to learning is truly universal.