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Annan says youth unemployment a growing problem which must be addressed

Annan says youth unemployment a growing problem which must be addressed

The high rate of youth joblessness worldwide is a growing problem which not only raises social concerns, but which also has economic and increasingly political dimensions, a recent report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says.

The high rate of youth joblessness worldwide is a growing problem which not only raises social concerns, but which also has economic and increasingly political dimensions, a recent report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says.

Since the September 2000 adoption of the Millennium Declaration, which focuses on reducing or eliminating a host of socio-economic ills by 2015, the urgency of the need to provide young people with access to decent, productive work has increased and inaction is not an option, the Secretary-General’s report says.

The assessment and recommendations which made up the study were based on a global analysis and evaluation of 39 national action plans on youth unemployment compiled by the UN International Labour Organization (ILO).

According to ILO estimates, young men and women make up about 47 percent of the 186 million people unemployed worldwide although they represent only 25 percent of the working-age population.

“Little progress on implementing the Millennium Declaration will be achieved unless young people are provided with the resources, self-esteem and dignity which decent work can provide,” the ILO report said.

The Secretary-General’s report also recommends that the General Assembly encourage those countries which have prepared national reviews and action plans to move forward to the implementation stage and to devise new policy-oriented indicators to monitor and evaluate progress.

It further states that unemployment insurance or welfare protection represented an enormous drain on national and local budgets in countries which have social protection. At the same time, these insurances and protections represented a waste of the capabilities and potential contribution to social development of the best educated generation of young people ever.

In those countries without such institutional protections, the burden was felt in other ways, ranging from families providing income support to grown children after having invested in their education, to young people struggling in low-income, dead-end and often dangerous jobs, to destructive behaviour such as neighbourhood gang activity or membership in local militias, the report also said.