UN Information Center’s traditional UN Friday hosted a discussion on Youth’s Role in Development. UNFPA, along with UNDP, UNAIDS, UNV and UNIC co-organized the discussion in panel format at UN Office in Tashkent, attended by many enthusiastic young people and mass-media representatives.
Over 60% of Uzbekistan’s population is under 30, and the United Nations has made it one of their priorities to continuously search for new means of incorporating the nation’s youth into its operations. This week’s UN Friday was conducted in a panel discussion format, delivered by the UNFPA Country Representative for Uzbekistan Karl Kulessa, the UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Jaco Cilliers, the UNV programme officer Marc Liberati, and the UNAIDS National Programme Officer Komiljon Akhmedov. Each of the four panelists offered their agency’s unique perspectives regarding the topic at hand, and their insights and comments made it clear that the role that Uzbekistan’s youth play in their nation’s development has been a central focus of the UN.
During the discussion, a topic that often surfaced and was indeed the main focus of the dialogue exchanged between the guest panellists, the event moderators and the gathered audience, was not whether youth are sufficiently motivated to help develop their country, but rather how their desire to do so can be nurtured and encouraged.
A number of solutions were proposed to overcome these concerns, two of which were communication and education (indeed, these two solutions were deeply connected). In regards to communication, it was recognised that dialogue and mutual respect needs to be maintained between adults and youth, but more importantly youth should be encouraged to exchange information between themselves, and use the imagination, unique perspectives and enthusiasm so often associated with their generation to discover new solutions to problems. The success of both the UNFPA Y-PEER program which utilizes the highly-effective peer-to-peer education approach, and the UNV’s youth initiatives, both highlight the great potential of this method of communicating and spreading ideas.
Education was also recognised as a necessary step towards ensuring that Uzbekistan’s youth can play an effective role in encouraging development in their communities. It was agreed that in order for youth to feel that they have the ability to change their communities, they must also have access to the information required to do so. It was suggested that youth themselves may be able to inform each other about vital societal topics, while the need to incorporate whole families and local government into these conversations was also addressed.
UNFPA in Uzbekistan is working on youth-related issues for more than a decade. Our goal is to make quality reproductive health information and services available to every young person in the country.
