Brenda Yufeh
11 August 2006
Ahead of the International Youth Day to be celebrated August 12, the United Nations Information Centre in Yaounde, yesterday organised a ceremony during which leaders of youth associations talked about their problems and how they can contribute in the fight against poverty. The International Youth Day will be celebrated under the theme "Tackling poverty together: young people and the eradication of poverty."
During the event which grouped representatives from the United Nation's System in Cameroon and the Ministry of Youth Affairs, the Representative of the Ministry of Youths Affairs, Selema Akedjol, said the ministry's policy falls in line with the theme of the celebration. While explaining projects carried out by the Ministry to support urban youths in fighting against poverty, such as providing funds for the promotion of youth affairs, Selema Akedjol underscored some of the difficulties encountered in tackling the problems of youths. He said youths are not well organised and lack skills as well as the capacity to mount good projects and have access to financing. While emphasizing that the global objective of all organisations is to set up youths in all activities in the environments, dignitaries at the event stressed that there is need for flexible organisations to finance activities of youths.
In his message on the International Youth Day, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, accentuated that the world's young people, now numbering more than one billion, are a major human resource for development, and can be key agents of innovation and positive social change. "Yet the scale of youth poverty robs the world of that potential", the Secretary General noted. The Secretary General noted that the challenge is clear to everybody. Nations must pay more attention to education and in particular to the transition from education to employment. According to Kofi Annan, the ability of youth to find full and productive employment must be a central objective of national development strategies, including poverty reduction policies.
The message of the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koichiro Matsuura, designated the eradication of poverty, in particular extreme poverty, as a cross-cutting theme for the whole organisation, and has at the same time ensured that the needs of youth and young people are mainstreamed by all programme sectors. While celebrating the 2006 International Youth Day, Mr Koichiro Matsuura called on leaders in all walks of life, to come together to raise awareness on youth poverty, to scale up investments in tackling this problem and to develop integrated policies and programmes that engage young people and their organisations as key partners in development efforts.
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