UN Youth Initiatives—How Successful?
ABOUT 15 years ago, the UN proclaimed the year 1985 International Youth Year. In addition, some four years ago, the UN adopted the World Programme of Action for Youth to the Year 2000 and Beyond. These initiatives, it was hoped, would help to reduce problems and increase opportunities for the world’s more than one billion young people. Did these programs make a difference?
No doubt in some areas they did. Choices, a magazine published by the United Nations Development Programme, gives some examples: In Thailand more than half of preschool children were malnourished in 1982. Less than ten years later, however, moderate and severe malnutrition had been almost eliminated. In the country of Oman, there were only three schools in 1970 and only 900 boys attended. But in 1994, nearly 500,000 children in that country went to school, and 49 percent of them were girls. Without a doubt, those are success stories.
However, the UN publication United Nations Action for Youth notes that especially in the developing world, progress is overshadowed by persistent problems related to education, employment, and poverty, and these are just a few of the areas that the World Programme aims to improve.
Many developing countries, for instance, will not meet the goal of primary education for all children by the year 2000. Parents in these countries often cannot send their children to school because schools are not available or are not affordable. As a consequence, notes United Nations Action for Youth, “the number of illiterate people will continue to grow.” Illiteracy, in turn, contributes to unemployment, and unemployment leads to a wide range of social ills, such as “low self-esteem, marginalization,” the waste of youthful talents, and extreme poverty. And although poverty strikes young and old alike, young people are particularly vulnerable. The same UN source concludes that despite all efforts, “hunger and malnutrition remain among the most serious and intractable threats to humanity.”
Though well-intended programs and hardworking professionals are making some difference, they are unable to remove the causes of society’s ills. More is needed to accomplish that. As the book Mensenrechten en de noodzaak van wereldbestuur (Human Rights and the Necessity of World Governance) states, the world’s problems will be solved only ‘if a world government comes about that is in a position to take enforceable measures.’ It is not surprising, then, that Christians—young and old alike—look forward to God’s incoming Kingdom, the world government that Jesus told his followers to pray for. (Daniel 2:44; Matthew 6:9, 10) That government will truly make a difference!
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Education is a fundamental right and need of all children
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WHO photo by J. Mohr
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FAO photo/F. Mattioli
Logo: UN photo