The World Youth Skills Day was celebrated around the world on July 15. This day was established on December 18, 2014 by General Assembly resolution A/RES/69/145 which was initiated by Sri Lanka. The allocation of a specific day by the UN to highlight the need for enhanced youth skills was a major success for Sri Lanka at the world body since the normal experience of Sri Lanka in the West was to be subjected to endless barrages of accusations relating to war crimes and human rights violations. For once, Sri Lanka was being recognized for a different reason following a controlled use of soft power.
Following a lengthy consultation process, at the UN and outside, during which some delegations, including some Europeans expressed reservations, the resolution was eventually adopted unanimously. It received solid support from youth delegations from around the world. But this was the result of extensive and coordinated lobbying by Sri Lanka’s youth themselves. Some Europeans, in particular, Portugal recognized the value of highlighting the need for youth skills and supported Sri Lanka’s initiative. The US was another delegation that encouraged this initiative.
The World Youth Skills Day resolution was a landmark UN initiative and had its origins in a visionary statement made by the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka at the 2013 UNGA. The idea was subsequently championed by the Sri Lankan Minister for Youth Affairs, Dulles Alahapperuma. The Minister expended considerable time and energy lobbying countries to secure their support for this initiative. The Sri Lankan delegation, at the time, worked the UN corridors tirelessly until the scales were tipped and the adoption of the resolution became certain. It also demonstrated that a small country with limited resources could win global support for a good idea with a well orchestrated and astutely led campaign.
Resolution A/RES/69/145 built upon the World Programme of Action for Youth of 2007, International Youth Day in 1999 and the Colombo Declaration on Youth of 2014, which, for the first time, was adopted with the concurrence of both the youth and official delegations. Never before had a youth summit succeeded in issuing a declaration with the concurrence of both the officials and the youth. (The Declaration was negotiated under the chairmanship of Dr Palitha Kohona, the then Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka in New York).
The Global Youth Summit in Colombo and the Declaration was a major achievement for Sri Lanka and was the result of strenuous and carefully planned lobbying in capitals and consistent pressure on delegations in New York. The Sri Lankan delegation even issued a commemorative coin in burnished metal for the Colombo Summit, thanks to a donation by a well wisher. Eventually, despite reservations expressed by some UN delegations, mainly from the West, it was decided to hold the summit in Colombo and the Secretary-General was represented by the President of the General Assembly with whom the Sri Lanka delegation had maintained very close relations. The Secretary- General’s Special Envoy for Youth, Ahmed Al Hendavi also attended the event.
The Colombo Declaration on Youth required youth needs to be mainstreamed in policy making. With an increasing number of unemployed youth worldwide, the majority of whom are in developing countries, the United Nations system was activated to take measures to help young people to achieve their intrinsic potential.
The World Youth Skills Day 2020, as did all youth skills days before, aims to encourage the acquisition of marketable skills and training by the young. By acquiring core professional and lifestyle skills, young people will be able to contribute to the development and growth of their own communities. This year an additional challenge confronts youth and the world which is reeling from the impact of Covid19. Unemployment is at record levels and the youth are particularly affected. Schools and universities have not functioned properly for months especially in developing countries. Faced with these unexpected challenges, modern skills transferring mechanisms are being widely employed in developed countries, such as distant learning and the use of IT. Again, it would seem that the developing world runs the risk of being left behind as IT facilities are not available extensively in many countries of the global south. It is also a pity that the opportunity provided by the Covid 19 pandemic was not grasped quickly to migrate to IT based learning in the global south. Too much deference was paid to conservative and outmoded thinking.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has identified marketable skills and jobs for youth as a priority. The World Youth Skills Day embodies the values of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with special emphasis on:
•SDG 4: Quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities,
•SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
The youth component of the global population is increasing and a new problem of critical magnitude is slowly creeping upon policy makers, especially in developing countries. Many developing countries, consistent with their commitments under the Millennium Development Goals, some with great difficulty, have provided basic literacy and health care to their populations. Sri Lanka boasts of exceptional literacy skills but is woefully incapable of coping with a world rapidly shifting to IT dependency. The eager return to rote learning in most schools and tutorials with the easing of Covid 19 related restrictions demonstrates a serious lack of imaginative planning. Some developing countries such as China and Singapore have successfully confronted this challenge and there are valuable lessons to be learned from them. Many youth now survive to old age. But providing meaningful employment to these millions who possess basic literacy has not been successfully addressed. The key challenge today is the paucity of marketable skills among youth. An educated and skilled workforce is also a key factor in accelerating development and in attracting investments. The youth of today will be directly confronted by two major challenges. They will be required to generate wealth through employment or entrepreneurship, not only to support themselves but also a rapidly ageing older generation. Employment for the young was not a major issue in developed countries in the past, but today it is.
With stuttering economies and without income generating employment, the youth demographic will be a burden on itself and a worry for the older generation. The number of young in the developed West continuing to live with their parents in to their twenties is a new phenomenon. While the situation for all youth remains a challenge, the unfortunate tendency for young women in many developing countries to fall behind even further compared with their male counterparts due to the lack of employable skills and social attitudes has been highlighted frequently. Equipping young women also with employable skills will enhance the economic potential of a country dramatically.
The modern skill sets required to operate in a high tech environment, including in the areas of management, environment conservation, ICT, banking, transport, aviation, etc, are simply not being provided in quantity, even in the universities. The result is a burgeoning, restless and disenchanted generation that could cause social and more serious problems, instead of being an economic asset.
The world today is home to the largest generation of youth in history. 90% of young people live in developing countries. Unemployment affects more than 73 million young people around the world, (even more in the post Covid 19 world) with the jobless rate exceeding 50 per cent in some developing countries.
Even some developed countries, especially in the south of Europe, have not been able to avoid the youth unemployment crisis. Many are still to recover from the financial crisis and youth have been its major victims. Covid 19 ravaged Europe and brought many thriving economies to a standstill. Recovery time will stretch into years. The world will need to add 600 million new jobs by 2026 to accommodate the flood tide of youth entering the job market. The former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Empowering young people through skills development strengthens their capacity to help address the many challenges facing society….”.
These multiple challenges include, inter alia, alleviating poverty, eliminating injustice, conserving the environment and controlling violent conflict. In order to focus attention on youth issues, the former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, established the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. Today a young Sri Lanka woman, Jayathma Wickremanayaka, is the SG’s Youth Envoy. She cut her teeth in global youth affairs during the lead up to the Youth Summit held in Sri Lanka in 2014.
Industrialization, so clearly emphasised in the SDGs, will require the new generation to be adequately prepared, as the new industrialization process will rely mostly on high tech. Some developed countries, especially the Northern Europeans, have well tested programmes for enhancing the technical skills of youth. Youth are channeled into technical studies at an early age.
There are many lessons that could be learnt from the education and training methods of these countries, especially in the context of North South Cooperation. Some developing countries have also succeeded in harnessing the youth component of their populations for economically productive endeavours. Their experiences could be shared in the context of South-South Cooperation.
The private sector, if necessary in partnership with the state, can play a vital role in disseminating advanced skills to today’s youth.
The importance of youth participation and representation in institutional political processes and policy-making has been highlighted in recent discussions. Youth need to be able to influence policy making. Sri Lanka has generated much enthusiasm among the youth for politics. For far too long policy making for youth had little or no youth input. Sri Lanka was among the first to establish a youth parliament to provide training in political activity for youth. In certain countries, where youth disenchantment is rife, especially for economic reasons, young people have often been coerced or otherwise channelled to joining extremist elements. But it is a mistake to suggest that economic circumstances alone are the major factor that drives youth in to extremism. The causes of youth extremism need to be addressed as a separate exercise.
(Dr. Palitha Kohona was the former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN)
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