press briefing on world youth 2003

The world’s youth were better off today than previous generations, although many were still severely hampered by a lack of education, poverty, problems of health, unemployment and the impact of conflict, Johan Schölvinck, the Director of the Division for Social Policy and Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told correspondents at a Headquarters briefing today.

He said those were some of the major findings of the “World Youth Report 2003”, the first comprehensive United Nations publication to examine the global situation of young people against the 10 priority areas identified by Member States when they adopted the 1995 World Programme of Action for Youth.

The main message to emerge from the Report, he added, was that young people needed to be given the tools to make them effective agents of social change and enable them to realize their potential.  Young women and men between 15 and 24 years of age in some regions were better educated and had an unprecedented knowledge of the world around them, yet 133 million youth remained illiterate.  Only one in four young persons -- or 22 per cent of young women and 26 per cent of young men -- was enrolled in secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa.  That figure was 40 to 57 per cent in South Asia, and 62 to 67 per cent in the Middle East and North Africa.  Of the slightly more than 1 billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24, almost nine out of 10 lived in developing countries.  Up to 110 million youth were estimated to be malnourished and up to 7,000 became infected with HIV/AIDS daily. 

The report also found that armed conflicts had taken an enormous toll on young people, with 2 million children killed and 6 million more left disabled as a result of wars during the last decade.  Additionally, a total of 12 million were made homeless and more than 1 million were orphaned or separated from their parents.  More than 10 million remained traumatized.  Although they represented only about 18 per cent of the world’s population, youth accounted for 40 per cent of the unemployed.  With some 70 million of them currently without work, that rate of youth unemployment was two to three times higher than that of adults.

Mr. Schölvinck said the Report also examined five new priorities that had emerged since the adoption of the 1995 plan of action:  globalization; information and communication technologies; HIV/AIDS; conflict; and inter-generational relations.  The 10 priority concerns earlier identified in the plan of action were education, employment, extreme poverty, health issues, the environment, drugs, delinquency, leisure time, the situation of girls and young women, and youth participation in decision-making.

* *** *