“Young people must become conscious of their responsibilities in the world they will be called upon to manage and should be inspired with confidence in a future of happiness for mankind.”
This is Principle VI of the United Nations Declaration on the Promotion Among Youth of the Ideals of Peace, Mutual Respect and Understanding Between Peoples, proclaimed on December 7, 1965.
It is not difficult to find young people conscious of their responsibilities in the world, but it is increasingly difficult to understand how the deeply disparate, often disconnected and increasingly competitive actions of the United Nations and its various agencies in the youth field “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character”, as the UN Charter defines the purpose of the United Nations.
The UN is certainly not “a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends,” another principal purpose of the organisation. In fact, the UN has not even managed to coordinate or harmonise its own actions in the youth field.
The Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Population Fund (UNFPA), the Development Programme (UNDP), the Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Alliance of Civilizations (AOC) – all these agencies, programmes, funds, offices, organisations and initiatives work on youth issues, and they are only some of the more than 30 UN entities with a youth focus.
Add competing frameworks and processes such as the follow-up to the International Conference on Population and Development beyond 2014, which will include a UNFPA-backed Global Youth Forum in Bali in December 2012, and the work on the post-2015 development agenda, which will include a UNHABITAT-backed World Youth Conference in Sri Lanka in 2014, and things get even more disparate and disconcerting.
A 2008 publication (pdf, 5 MB) introducing the youth-focused work of the United Nations is more than a hundred pages long. An Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (IANYD) was created in 2010 with the aim to increase the effectiveness of UN work in youth development “by strengthening collaboration and exchange among all relevant UN entities, while respecting and harnessing the benefits of their individual strengths and unique approaches and mandates.” (source)
In a joint statement (pdf, 1 MB) at the occasion of the 2011 High-Level Meeting on Youth, the network pledged
“to increase the effectiveness of the United Nations in advocating for and supporting national efforts to accelerate the implementation of international agreements and development goals as they relate to adolescents and youth.”
It hasn’t helped all that much.
Both the 2010 Report of the Secretary-General on the “United Nations system coordination and collaboration related to youth” (pdf) and the 2012 Report of the Secretary General on “Adolescents and Youth” (pdf) paint a desolate picture: next to the new inter-agency network, numerous other informal and institutionalised global and regional mechanisms on youth issues continue to exist. To make things worse, with one exception,
“no joint workplan has, to date, been adopted by the various inter-agency mechanisms. Rather, entities have focused on implementing their own workplans and have participated in inter-agency activities that were in line with previously existing, agency-specific workplans.”
(Report of the Secretary-General on United Nations system coordination and collaboration related to youth, pdf, N° 62, p. 13)
The 2012 Report of the Secretary General on “Adolescents and Youth” (pdf) showcases how the analysis of the situation of young people, and the response of the UN, remain completely sectoralised and disconnected. Watched through the lense of one specific UN agency or programme, conclusions are drawn on future actions which are neither coordinated nor aligned with the analysis or action of other parts of the system.
The different mandates, mechanisms and logics keep co-existing and colliding, and the long over-due alignment and coordination is prevented by rivaling people jockeying for positions and influence and competing agencies jockeying for money and power. In its entirety, the United Nations is, currently, failing youth.
Will the most recent developments — the appointment of a Special Adviser for Youth announced by Ban Ki Moon and the Youth 21 Initiative pushed forward by UN-HABITAT – make things better?
Thank you for this well researched and timely article. It is harsh in its criticism about the United Nations, perhaps deservedly so, yet there are a few perspectives that need to be taken into account.
First, the different entities of the United Nations are bound by the mandates given to them by member states. The only intergovernmental agreement that lays down a comprehensive mandate for the United Nations on young people’s issues is the World Programme for Action on Youth. It identifies fifteen priority areas and outlines proposals for action but it does not specifically assign the responsibility for its implementation to any particular entity nor does it lay down a division of labour within the United Nations. As a result, various agencies work for young people, each based on its own mandate and priorities.
Second, young people are too large and diverse a demographic group to be addressed by any one United Nations entity or programme, and as such, the diversity of perspectives within the United Nations adds to its strength. It is a welcome development that over 30 agencies are increasing their focus on youthful populations. UNFPA has advocated for several years now that all development efforts should focus investments in adolescents and youth working across the health, education, labour and other sectors, which needs the combined efforts of the entire United Nations system.
That being said, there is clearly a need to harmonize and coordinate efforts to avoid overlap, competition. At the global level, there are clearly multiple efforts to harmonize efforts. The United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Adolescent Girls (co-chaired by UNICEF and UNFPA), the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team on HIV and Young People (also co-chaired by UNICEF and UNFPA) and the Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (with DESA as the permanent co-chair and UN-HABITAT this year as a rotating co-chair) – are actually very effective mechanisms for cooperation at the global level – evidenced by their increasing results in establishing joint United Nations programmes in countries and coordinated advocacy globally.
Finally, the true test of the United Nation’s effectiveness on development for young people should be judged on the ground, in countries, where it works with governments, civil society and young people themselves. The United Nations Development Group lists 17 countries where there is a joint programme bringing together all United Nations agencies to work on adolescents and youth.
In Kenya, for example, the UN Joint Programme on Youth Employment and Empowerment established in 2010 aims at “improved economic and social status of youth in Kenya by 2013”. The programme has outcome areas on reducing youth unemployment, preventing drug use, crime and conflict, and increased coordination. The three cross-cutting areas are literacy, gender and HIV/AIDS.
In Morocco, a joint UNFPA-UNICEF programme on young people established in 2009 resulted in a national multisectoral initiative for young people that brought together different ministries, NGOs and young people. A pilot project to integrate the rights and needs of adolescents and youth in the process of local development has been concluded, evaluated and in the process of being scaled up. A plan of advocacy and communication was developed with the participation of young people and is being implemented.
In Nicaragua, a joint UN programme launched in 2009 aims to ensure that public policies promote youth employment and create opportunities for young people, taking advantage of the demographic dividend.
In Liberia, a UN Joint Programme for Youth Employment and Empowerment established with the Government of Liberia aims to provide young people with the skills and knowledge that empower and enable them to contribute constructively and effectively to their communities as well as in their workplace. The programme prioritizes 2 of the 15 counties of Liberia that are most in need and targets out of school young people with a focus on girls and young women.
Much progress has been made in coordinating the United Nation’s response to young people at the global level through the Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development which should be strengthened. In 2011, UNFPA offices reported in 2011 that in over 31 countries, efforts are under way to develop or implement joint programmes programmes. There is a need to strengthen such efforts in countries and to promote a coordinated approach towards multisectoral joint programming at the country level – which will strengthen the ability of the United Nations to deliver as one for young people.
Prateek Awasthi
Programme Analyst, Adolescents and Youth
UNFPA
(The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent the position of the UNFPA)