Youth Manifesto launched with Coalition and partners

Last Friday, July 16, the Global Youth Coalition along with UNITE 2030, FIA Foundation, and Restless Development officially launched the Youth Manifesto – a document that presents the main issues and priorities young people face as it relates to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Youth Manifesto is a product of a polling system that was launched last September 2020 during the 75thUN General Assembly called “nothing for us without us”. The poll asked young people about the biggest challenges they face which were then discussed through the UN75 Dialogue. All these ideas and opinions were gathered in a document that supports the demands of the youth.

The document emphasizes that young people are often “seen but not heard” stating that this was caused by the lack of meaningful youth engagement on issues that matter, lack of investment, and lack of political will at all levels of decision-making. 

The Manifesto presents the everyday struggles of young people around the world, specifically unemployment, quality education, health and well-being, sustainable cities and communities, climate change, and road safety. To address these issues, through the manifesto, young people are demanding advocacy and collaboration, data and investments, and human-centered and community-based actions. 

The launch featured different youth leaders from around the world to talk more about Manifesto. The Global Youth Coalition was represented by Thiago Gruner from Brazil, Soumita Chakraborty from India, and Simon Patrick Obi from Nigeria. 

 

Soumita talked about the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and talked about how it connected with road safety. “Climate change is not anymore is an event that will take place in the future, it is already here. I would like to highlight that, among others, transportation is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions hence climate action definitely needs to be planned for in accordance to sustainable mobility and efforts to de-carbonize the transport sector”. 

Simon talked about the importance and necessity of involving young people in policymaking and decision-making efforts saying that “we have the solution”, especially when it comes to the leading killer of young people worldwide; road crashes. 

“Just like the way the world rose up to the challenges of COVID, we are also calling the world to rise up to the challenge of road traffic crashes. We’re telling leaders and stakeholders of the world to start engaging young people. Start involving us in policy making, start reaching out to us and that way, we are able to solve this problem”. 

The manifesto was written by youth leaders of the different organizations who worked on the manifesto; Thiago Gruner from the Coalition, Shagun Sharma from Restless Development, Linda Ngozwana from UNITE 2030, and Kristeena Monteith from the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.