Youth engagement in United Nations Organs and related mechanism and processes.

  Young people have been actively engaged in the decision-making architecture of the United Nations for decades. This has evolved consider ably during the past 20 years, yet major gaps in coverage remain. In Agenda 21, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, Member States called upon “each country and the United Nations to support the promotion and creation of mechanisms to involve youth representation in all United Nations processes in order to influence those processes”. In response to this and other similar pronouncements, there has been a steady, if uneven, expansion of arrangements to enable young people to actively engage in intergovernmental decision-making processes. Formal youth engagement in the follow-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is carried out through the Major Group for Children and Youth, one of the major groups and other stakeholder constituencies. The Major Group for Children and Youth is a self-organized mechanism for young people to meaningfully engage in the sustainable development-related work of the General Assembly and Economic and Social Council, as well as in follow-up to sustainable development-related agreements on such top ics as finance, climate change and countries in special situations. At the high-level political forum on sustainable development, for instance, the Major Group for Children and Youth enjoys significant engagement opportunities, including submission of position papers, participation in negotiations on the Ministerial Declaration and speaking opportunities during the presentation of voluntary national reviews. Another key entry point for youth is the United Nations Youth Delegate Programme, which facilitates youth representation in Member State delegations. Coordinated and supported by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the selection process, mandates and responsibilities of youth delegates are determined by individual Member States. Member State interest in the Programme is evident in the steady rise in par ticipation in it, from 7 delegates at the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly to 71 at the seventy-sixth session. Today, some 90 Member States have included youth delegates to engage in decision-making processes, bringing the total number of youth delegate participants to almost 1,000. The Economic and Social Council youth forum is another significant space for young people to engage at the United Nations – and the only United Nations organ with a dedicated space for youth engagement. Focused on the role of youth in contributing to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, participants include ministers and senior representatives of Member States, youth focal points in United Nations entities, civil society and other stake holders. The forum is co-organized by the Major Group for Children and Youth and the International Coordination Mechanism of Youth Organizations. Youth engage with the forum through various channels, such as online submissions, virtual consultations, videos and social media, as well as in-person participation. Held online in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, more than 22,000 participants engaged in the forum in 2022. The Peacebuilding Commission has also been particularly supportive of the critical role of young people and youth organizations in peacebuilding and sustaining peace. In 2021, the Commission adopted a strategic action plan on youth and peacebuilding and, in 2022, representatives of youth organizations and initiatives participated in 37.5 per cent of the Commission’s meetings. The Global Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security plays a key role in facilitating this work. Elsewhere, however, youth participation is less structured. For instance, there is no formal mechanism for youth to engage systematically in the work of the Security Council, resulting in young people being invited to join only a handful of the matic discussions, open debates or Arria-formula meetings. Similarly, there is no structured approach to youth engagement in the Human Rights Council, even though youth has been the focus of numerous meetings, panels, reports and resolutions in recent years. Work will begin in 2023 on a biennial panel on youth and human rights. In addition, thematic youth engagement mechanisms have emerged in an organic way across a range of other intergovernmental decision-making bodies (see table 3). For their part, United Nations entities have similarly sought to increase their ability to engage young people. Some have established dedicated youth advisory boards or councils. Others have appointed youth envoys, created pacts with youth or established spaces for partnership development and co-creation. 

Under the umbrella of the first United Nations system-wide youth strategy, “Youth 2030: working with and for young people”, launched in 2018, 131 United Nations country teams and over 50 United Nations entities measure progress towards the implementation of youth engagement in their work. Four years into the implementation of the strategy, significant improvements in working with youth have been reported across the United Nations system, both in terms of the diversity of youth involved, as well as in terms of the various processes and plat forms where young people are engaged. The decision by the General Assembly to estab lish and fund the first United Nations Youth Office in the Secretariat will further strengthen the ability of the United Nations system to engage young people in its work, both formally and informally – by establishing a dedicated capacity at the core of the United Nations with the explicit mandate to support meaningful youth engagement and to coordinate the United Nations system’s overall work for and with youth.