ECOSOC Youth Forum 2023 – UNRC TPs

How are young people engaged in Youth2030 implementation and in the UN’s support to Governments to achieving the SDGs at country level? What is needed to accelerate? 

Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

The UN in Serbia set up the Youth Advisory Group, with 12 young persons from diverse backgrounds, including a refugee from Afghanistan – some are working, some are students. The group acts as a key mechanism to engage with young people, benefit from their views and ideas to create a sustainable environment - it also serves as a platform to provide and amplify reciprocal feedback, share knowledge, and strengthen networks.

Key requests of young people to the UN in serbia are to access knowledge, decision making processes, and political and institutional leadership. One of our most decisive actions was to plug this Youth Group to global initiatives such as COP, Sustainable Food Systems, the transforming education summit, the World Urban Forum. Each of the 12 members has chosen a set of topics on which they can be the focal point, and Dunja, our moderator on stage today has brought the voice of young Serbian people to COP27 and to dialogs around food systems, both in country and internationally.

Another important role of the youth group is to connect with and amplify multiple UN programmes on youth – such as our regional peace building programme focusing on social cohesion and conflict prevention, where key objectives are to build capacity of young people to participate to local and national political bodies, and to combat hate speech.

What do we see as key accelerators:

I will mention 3 opportunities targeting individuals, the education sector, and the legislative framework:

1. The 12 members of the youth group have started a mentoring programme by which they are trained to become mentors of other youths, in 6 local governments. The initial focus of this programme is on the wider human rights agenda, and on gender equality. This is about expanding the outreach and building interest and capacities of other young people who traditionally don’t engage on development issues.

2. the second endeavour is to look at how we can include sustainability topics in both formal and non-formal education. That is a much more complex endeavour, but in the consultations of the TES, and in other local dialogs, we received requests from students and parents to advocate for a more systemic focus on contemporary issues such as climate change, civic education or behavioural education. For example, we can look at ways to build skills for young people to manage uncertainties, conflicts or to be resilient.

3. Finally in January 2023, the Government of Serbia adopted the National Youth Strategy 2030, an important document that aims to create a supportive environment for young people. The UN supported the GoS to align this strategy with the SDGs, with the UN Youth2030 Strategy, and the EU Youth Strategy; and we have supported multiple consultations with youth to reflect their needs and priorities.

We are in a good place now, and we hope to do even more in the coming years.