As youths around the world to mark the International Youth Day (IYD), Paradigm Initiative (PIN) calls for policies that will ensure that social safety nets are afforded to youths to ensure they are able to get access to improved livelihoods and to be able to actively engage in any global action.
This year’s commemoration comes at a time when the world is battling against the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects are adverse on vulnerable youths such as refugees, those in rural areas, migrants and more so, youths in the informal sector who live from hand to mouth due to high level of unemployment in many African countries.
According to the UN/DESA Policy Brief number 67: Protecting and mobilising youth in Covid-19 responses; young people are particularly vulnerable to the disruptions caused by the pandemic.
PIN, a social enterprise that builds an ICT-enabled support system to improve livelihoods for under-served youth, said more than one in five (22.4 percent) young people aged 15–24 are neither in employment, education or training.
The organisation in a statement to BDSUNDAY, urged African states to provide youths with equal opportunities for education and employment.
“As we pay tribute to the youths in our communities, we urge African states to continue to take strides to ensure the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4, which urges states to increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all,” the organisation said.
It added that it is committed to empowering young people with skills that capacitate them to serve their communities and to improve their livelihoods.
It also said states should ensure that youths have access to the internet in keeping with Principle 37(2) of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights provides that states shall recognise that universal, equitable, affordable and meaningful access to the internet is necessary for the realisation of freedom of expression, access to information and the exercise of other human rights.
The International Youth Day was endorsed in 1999 by the General Assembly after a recommendation by the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth. This year’s celebration is focused on ‘Youth Engagement for Global Action.’
