Youth, Democratic Governance and the MDGs Initiative for Asia

There are 1.2 billion young men and women aged 15-24 in the world today – making up almost a fifth of the world’s population. More then half of all youth, or 650 million persons, live in Asia and the Pacific. Of these 130 million live on less than $1/day and 356 million live on less than $2/day. (World Youth Report 2005) Youth, making up a large proportion of the population, also tend to be disproportionately affected by major global development challenges. This requires a refocusing on the part of policy-makers to address key issues affecting youth.

From this also follows that youth need to be given a greater degree of participation in decision-making and policy development. This was emphasized in the World Programme of Action for Youth to the Year 2000 and Beyond, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1995, which establishes as one of ten priorities the need for “full and effective participation of youth in the life of society and in decision-making”. Governments were urged to formulate and adopt national youth programmes of action in terms of specific, time bound objectives to this end. Yet despite this the World Youth Report 2003, which measured progress on the implementation of the programme of action, found that initiatives on youth in the region had to date been modest. Thus increased attention needs to be given to youth and democratic governance and increased efforts need to be made to enhance youth opportunities for involvement in global, regional and national development efforts.

It is in view of this that the Asia-Pacific Regional Centre has initiated the Youth, Democratic Governance and the MDGs Initiative for Asia – an Initiative under the Asia Regional Governance Programme. The long-term objectives of the Initiative are:

• To strengthen UNDP’s capacity to work on youth and democratic governance to facilitate the achievement of the MDGs;
• To develop national and regional capacities of stakeholders; and
• To establish/enhance links between youth and government, for the implementation of initiatives related to youth, democratic governance and the MDGs.

The initial activities under the Initiative have been to commission a study entitled "Youth, Democratic Governance and the MDGs" (PDF) from the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN), mapping various venues for engaging with youth with particular emphasis on the experience in Asia and to hold an initial planning meeting to reach agreement on the direction of the initiative.