Ahead of the World Youth Ministers renewing their commitment to youth policies, let’s look back at 1998

At this very moment, the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth is taking place in Lisbon, Portugal. It’s a reunion: 21 years ago, youth ministers met for the first time – in Lisbon – and agreed on a declaration on youth policies and programmes. To this day, parts of that declaration seem progressive, others overly cautious, and some have been reeled in by what has happened since. While some pdf-versions of the declaration linger, there is no html-version left online. We reproduce it here as a historical artifact – and a point of comparison to the new Lisbon declaration that will hopefully be agreed tomorrow.

The Council of Europe celebrates its 70th anniversary – and quietly prepares to sacrifice its youth sector

The Council of Europe is the smaller, older, and poorer of the two European supranational institutions, and is often confused with the Council of its much larger sister organisation, the European Union. In the youth sector, however, nobody makes that mistake: The two European Youth Centres in Strasbourg and Budapest and the European Youth Foundation have profoundly shaped international and intercultural youth work. But while the organisation celebrated its 70th anniversary in public this weekend, it has been secretly playing with scenarios to sacrifice its youth sector amidst a financial crisis.

The youth sector gets its first future policy award – and we need your nominations to make it count

“Young people are the future” – how often have we all heard this sentence being muttered and have rolled our eyes? And how often have we pointed out in meetings, at conferences and on the streets that too many policies are not futureproof and violate the rights of children and young people? To change that, the World Future Council (WFC) awards policies for the benefit of present and future generations. This year, the WFC has joined forces with the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to award the 2019 Future Policy Award to youth policies, acts, laws or decrees – and you can nominate them.