Abolition 2000 Youth Network launches a new video with messages from young people around the globe.
Firstly, a little bit of a background. August 12 was established as the International Youth Day 21 years ago, in 1999, by the United Nations General Assembly (General Assembly Resolution 54/120). The main objectives of such action were clear: to bring youth issues to the attention of the international community and to celebrate the potential of youth as partners in today’s global society.
This year, the theme is Youth Engagement for Global Action. “It seeks to highlight the ways in which the engagement of young people at the local, national and global levels is enriching national and multilateral institutions and processes, as well as draw lessons on how our representation and engagement in formal institutional politics can be significantly enhanced.”
As this UN article explains, “enabling the engagement of youth in formal political mechanisms does increase the fairness of political processes by reducing democratic deficits, contributes to better and more sustainable policies, and also has symbolic importance that can further contribute to restore trust in public institutions, especially among youth. Moreover, the vast majority of challenges humanity currently faces, such as the COVID-19 outbreak and climate change require concerted global action and the meaningful engagement and participation of young people to be addressed effectively.”
Abolition 2000 supports inter-generational dialogue. One of its working groups – the Abolition 2000 Youth Network was launched precisely for these purposes. To educate, inspire, engage and give opportunities to youth to participate in peace and disarmament activities in their local communities and countries and internationally.
To celebrate this years’ youth day, we posted a new compilation of Youth Voices, video messages from youth around the globe talking about issues affecting us today and into the future. Click here to see earlier youth messages. Click here for video messages from experts, policy-makers and others in the field responding to the Youth Voices.
We encourage you to highlight the importance of peace, nuclear disarmament and sustainable development for youth in your actions and events for Youth Day and every day. We invite you to submit your own video message for the Youth Voices project (either as a youth voice or in response). Some other examples of the activities can be found here.
Finally, let us know how you are celebrating! You can share your projects on Abolition 2000 Youth Network’s facebook page or group.
To become a member of the Abolition 2000 Youth Network and join our mailing list, please, email us at daria@pnnd.org.
Marzhan & Vanda
Abolition 2000 Youth Network