International Youth Day: Assessing challenges confronting the youth
The UN defines the world’s youth as the age group between 15 and 24 years old, making up one-sixth of the human population.
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The definition of youth varies from country to country. Generally, the period between childhood and adulthood is called “Youth.” During this period, a person prepares himself/herself to be an active and fully responsible member of society.
National Youth Policy
The National Youth Policy adopted in August 2010, with the theme: “Towards an empowered youth, impacting positively on national development”, emphasises that the youth all over the world have been acknowledged as an important human resource with the potential to contribute significantly to national development and, therefore, must be accorded such recognition and be involved in national development by the government and other stakeholders.
The policy defines “youth” as “persons who are within the age bracket 15 and 35.”
Ghana’s definition has been informed by those used by the United Nations Organisation and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
According to the 2000 Ghana Housing and Population Census, the population of Ghana was 18.9 million with an annual growth rate of 2.7 per cent. The youth in Ghana constitute about 33 per cent as a heterogeneous segment of Ghana’s population.
Youth Day
The idea for International Youth Day was proposed in 1991 by young people who gathered in Vienna, Austria, for the first session of the UN’s World Youth Forum. The forum recommended that an International Youth Day be declared, especially for fundraising and promotional purposes, to support the United Nations Youth Fund in partnership with youth organisations.
In 1998 a resolution proclaiming August 12 as International Youth Day was adopted during the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth. That recommendation was later endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 1999. International Youth Day was first observed in 2000.
Achieving 2039 Agenda
The theme of the 2016 International Youth Day is “The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production.”
This year’s celebration is about achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It focuses on the leading role of young people in ensuring poverty eradication and achieving sustainable development through sustainable consumption and production.
Challenges
While celebrating the event, it is important to discuss some of the major challenges facing young people in Ghana that the National Youth Policy seeks to address.
These are access to quality education for the youth in the educational sector with its attendant inadequate or inappropriate training for the job market; unemployment and underemployment, resulting from inadequate and inappropriate training for the job market and the negative effects of urbanisation and modernisation.
Others are the growing incidence of youth involved in violent conflicts (political, social and ethnic) and increasing juvenile crime, erosion of traditional social support systems for young persons and the weakened role of the family, leading to deviance, high incidence of drug and substance abuse, inadequate recreational and counselling facilities and inadequate mentoring opportunities which lead to weak moral, social, cultural and religious values among the youth.
It is important to note that the youth represent the next generation and need to be fully engaged in sustainable paths of development and in the climate change debate.
According to the policy, the new millennium provides the youth the opportunity for a new beginning for them to be involved in national development, since they are potential leaders of any nation, and a valuable resource that must be harnessed for national development.
The policy rightly argues that youth development does not occur in a vacuum and the policy provides the opportunity for the government to engage the youth and other stakeholders in meaningful partnership to develop appropriate interventions and services for youth empowerment.
