UN: International Year of Youth

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, for initiating this debate and for calling, as other noble Lords have done, for greater emphasis and a stronger focus on measures intended substantially to increase the participation and the quality of life of young people. The actions and the desired outcomes we have discussed here today, as noble Lords have shown, make absolute and infinite sense.

Young people have potentially a huge contribution to make because of their experience and understanding, which they can add to global efforts to meet the millennium development goals and to fight against inequality and discrimination. There has, quite rightly, been substantial investment in young children, especially those under five. However, that does not mean that there is any justification for giving insufficient attention to the crucial second decade of life, which of course is the focus of the UN International Year of Youth.

Youths continue to be subsumed under the category of children but are too often overlooked in the programming and resources available; it is far more likely that that programming and those resources will be directed to younger children. It means that young people’s contributions are overlooked and neglected. As many noble Lords will know, many of these young people are heads of households, often caring for young siblings, fetching water and preparing food, yet they have absolutely no authority within their community and are excluded from all the decision-making. We now risk jeopardising the gains in early and middle childhood that have been made since 1990 and seeing a deterioration in those advances.

I am reminded of the story of a young woman speaking at a recent UN meeting. She asked the delegates, “How old will you be in 2050?”. The chair of the committee admitted that he would be 110 and therefore unlikely to see the results of our failure to act. The fact is that the kind of world in which that young woman lives will depend both on those who inherit it and on those who bequeath it to them. Noble Lords have talked about young people being our future. I would say that young people are our present too, and it is very important that we remember that.

It has certainly been my experience that all too often young people are not consulted, are not taken seriously and are not given a voice, when the parameters of rights and responsibilities are clearly agreed under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Tackling the challenges faced by young women is imperative at this time, as many noble Lords have said.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

With many apologies to the noble Baroness, a Division has now been called in the Chamber. The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 5.26 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I carry on where I left off. Two-thirds of the 137 million illiterate young people in the world are young women. The noble Baroness mentioned some of the statistics. If you break them down, you see that more than half of HIV-infected young people are young women. That is why tackling the challenges faced by young women is an absolute imperative. Educating girls brings benefits such as delayed marriage, reduced rates of HIV, reduction in unwanted, unplanned pregnancies and maternal mortality, higher family incomes and lower rates of domestic violence. There is a long list of proven benefits. It is clear that talk of social transformation is meaningless unless the culture of discrimination and inequity which so many young women face is challenged. Young women need equal access to secondary education, to health, to employment, to juvenile justice and to identity. Adolescent girls need access to sexual and reproductive health rights. This should be urgently addressed. Complications relating to pregnancy and child birth are a leading cause of death worldwide among adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19.

Much of what needs to be done will be achieved only, as the noble Baroness said, if data are disaggregated. They should be disaggregated by age and gender; otherwise, one cannot make the relevant deductions. There has to be engagement across the board, from communities, Governments, the private sector, civil society, religious leaders, NGOs and donors. Everybody has to come behind the messages of this UN International Year of Youth. Many institutional and cultural barriers stand in the way of progress for young people at this time, but this year, which celebrates young people, should be used as a springboard for their future progress and opportunity.