Putting Youth into International Policies

Shashi Tharoor (United Nations) and Richard Amalvy (World Scouting)

Barcelona, 12 August 2004.
On the occasion of the International Youth Day, which is celebrated every year on 12 August, Shashi Tharoor under-Secretary General of United Nations in charge of Communication and Public Information illustrated the bad situation of young people today by the following example : “Ninety percent of the soldiers in the Ugandan army are children; they are children who kill other children and this has been going on since the eighties when the conflict began. Over 30,000 children have been recruited as soldiers.

Tharoor was accompanied by representatives of the youth organizations participating in the World Youth Festival 2004. Richard Amalvy, Director of External Communication of the World Scout Bureau, stressed the fact that the young people currently make up 50% of the world population and called for greater governmental support. “We have been in the process making diagnosis of youth problems for the past ten years. Now that the problems have been identified, it is time to define policies of action—but we don’t have the resources,” he stated. Amalvy lamented that, when it comes to youth, people only talk about the problems. He called for people to recognize young people’s ability to take responsibility and make decisions.

According to Koffi Tousah, the head of Africa Youth Network, all of Africa’s problems can be summed up by one fact: lack of democracy. “There is armed conflict, poverty, lack of rights... If there were democracy, these problems could be resolved,” he insisted. Tousah has requested aid to teach democracy to young people and thus prepare them to solve the continent’s problems in the future.Shashi Tharoor, under-secretary general for communication and public information of the United Nations stated during the World Youth Festival’s session on “Youth realities and youth policies”: “Although some borders between countries have been eliminated, they are the least important. We must do away with the gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the helpless, the starving and the satisfied.”