March and April 2014 have been big months for the world’s youth in terms of inclusion in development and planning agendas. As concerns about the total number of youth, particularly vulnerable youth – those who are unemployed/underemployed, refugee, under-educated, or financially excluded, for example – in the world rises, funders, strategists, government officials, scholars, and those in the development and aids sectors have undertaken a concerted effort to include and even prioritize youth in planning for the future. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), youth, defined as individuals between the ages of 10 and 24, currently total an estimated 1.8 billion people. Today’s youth are the largest generation the world has ever had. And, a large percentage of those youth live in developing economies or fragile states. The challenges facing the world in terms of successfully harnessing and integrating youth into economic and political processes are daunting.
CSIS’s new Global Youth Wellbeing Index, released this month in partnership with the International Youth Foundation and Hilton Worldwide, shows that the majority of the world’s youth are experiencing lower levels of well-being in forty assessment indicators across six domains. Youth in 18 of the 30 measured countries fall below the average well-being score for a total of 85 percent of youth in the study. And, even in economies where youth are doing well, they self-report what CSIS scientists coined as a “hope gap”; that is to say that in survey data capturing indices measuring youth satisfaction and outlook, youth often self-report low outlooks toward government and their economic futures as well as high levels of stress. The index, launched on April 3, was designed as a tool to be used for the development and improvement of youth-inclusive policies. As CSIS’s director Dr. John J. Hamre intimated in his opening remarks at the release, the index should further the study of, and help us reap the benefits of, incorporating youth into all aspects of the global economic framework:
“[What would you say] if I were to tell you that over the last several months, scientists have discovered and enormous energy source for the world. And, the best news is that this enormous energy source is located in the poorest countries in the world and it’s just there waiting to be tapped. And, if we tap it, this energy source is going to double and triple the GDP growth in these countries. You know, this would be global news, absolutely global news. And that is what it is; we do have that [in today’s youth].”
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also launched a youth-specific agenda this spring. From March 31 to April 2, the UNDP inaugurated the "UNDP Youth Strategy 2014-2017: Empowered Youth, Sustainable Future" over the course of a three-day event in Tunis, Tunisia. Employing a human rights approach, UNDP set three outcome foci: youth political participation, youth engagement in disaster preparedness and resilience building, and sustainable development pathways through enhanced youth economic empowerment. Positing that today’s youth are “more connected, better informed and with greater creativity than any previous generation,” UNDP Assistant Administrator Sima Bahous echoed the slow industry-wide shift toward integrating youth in finding solutions to youth issues. The UNDP’s approach seeks to do this by engaging and supporting youth via “youth and youth organization capacity development; advocacy and mainstreaming youth issues in development planning; empowerment and leadership; and national youth policy development and implementation.” According to Bahous, the aim is to conceptualize youth “as initiators, collaborators and partners in development.”
