Expert Group Meeting
United Nations, New York, 12 - 14 December 2005
From 12 to 14 December 2005, the Division for Social Policy and Development, UNDESA, hosted an expert group meeting, at United Nations Headquarters in New York, and brought together experts and regional representatives, youth organizations, United Nations Agencies, and intergovernmental organizations, to compile a draft set of indicators that could be used to monitor and measure youth development over time.
Read the Final report of the meeting
Background
The “World Youth Report 2005, Young people today and in 2015” makes a strong argument to scale up the investment in youth development. The statistics are clear: 200 million youth live on less than US$1 a day, 130 million are illiterate, 10 million live with HIV, and 88 million young people are unemployed. While Member States and United Nations Agencies increasingly recognize the importance of investing in youth, it is very difficult to measure the success of their interventions. Programmes and policies are insufficiently monitored and most data are not age disaggregated.
The World Programme of Action for Youth was instrumental in setting a global agenda for young people on the basis of 10 priority areas in 1995. However, the WPAY did not provide for a set of verifiable indicators that could be used to monitor the progress achieved in these priority areas.
At its sixtieth session, the General Assembly adopted resolution 60/2, which requests the United Nations Secretariat, in collaboration with other relevant United Nations programmes and agencies, to establish a broad set of indicators related to youth, which Governments and other actors may choose to use to monitor the situation of young people related to the priority areas identified in the World Programme of Action and five new areas of concern to youth: viz. globalization, HIV/AIDS, ICT, conflict and intergenerational issues.
During an interagency meeting on youth, held in Coimbra, Portugal, in January 2005, the idea to create a set indicators on youth development and possibly an index was received very positively among all United Nations agencies. The Commonwealth Secretariat organized a follow-up meeting where the discussion on the content of the indicators started, and the Division for Social Policy and Development’s Programme on Youth is organizing this meeting to further the debate and come to an agreement on the set of indicators. Discussion will be focused around the 3 cluster areas of the WPAY:
- Youth in a global economy, including: education, employment, hunger and poverty, and globalization.
- Youth in civil society, including: leisure, environment, participation in decision-making, information and communication technology, and intergenerational relations.
- Youth and their well being, including: health, HIV/AIDS, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, the disadvantaged position of girls and young women, and armed conflict.
Report of the meeting
Biographies of participants
Agenda and time-table
Indicators on youth existing in the UN system
UN sytem web sites: Statistics and indicators
Agenda of the meeting
- Welcome and introduction
Johan Schölvinck, Director, Division for Social Policy and Development - Presentation - What is youth development, how can it be measured?
Joop Theunissen, UN Focal Point on Youth - Presentation - Existing youth development indicators and data on youth
- Charlotte van Hees, United Nations Programme on Youth - Background
- Serguey Ivanov, UNDESA - Population Division - Presentation
- Data gathering, roles of various stakeholders
- Francesca Coullare, UN Statistics Divisions, UNDESA (Data gathering mechanisms in the international statistical system) - Presentation
- Lydiah Kiburu, World Organization of the Scout Movement, Africa Regional Office (Role of youth organizations) - Presentation
- National/regional perspectives to monitoring youth development
- Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, UNESCO regional coordinator, Brazil, (Youth Development Indicators and Index in Brazil) - Presentation
- Bettina Schwarzmayr, European Youth Forum (youth policy indicators developed by the Council of Europe) Presentation and background
- Baby Jacob, Regional College of Management, Orissa (India) - Presentation
- Su Songxing, Sociology Institute of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (China)
- Carles Feixa, University of Lleida and researcher at the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (Spain) - Presentation and background
- Defining youth development indicators for Youth in a Global Economy
- David Gordon, Head, Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, University of Bristol (hunger/poverty) - Presentation
- Maria-Helena Henriques-Mueller, Youth Coordination Section, UNESCO (education)
- Steven Kapsos, Employment Trends Team, ILO (employment) - Presentation
- David Gordon, Head, Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice, University of Bristol (globalization)
- Defining youth development indicators for Youth and their wellbeing
- Kenneth Land, Duke University and University of Texas (delinquency) - Presentation
- Gautam Babbar, Expert Adviser Drug Demand Reduction, UNODC (drugs)
- Krishna Bose, Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development, WHO (health) - Presentation
- Laura Laski, Coordinator of the Adolescent and Youth Cluster, UNFPA (HIV/AIDS and reproductive health) - Presentation
- Angela Langenkamp, Gender and Youth Expert, German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) (gender) - Presentation
- Colette Daiute, City University of New York (Armed conflict) - Presentation
- Jane Kembabazi (Armed conflict) - Presentation
- Defining youth development indicators for Youth in Civil Society
- Roger Hart, City University of New York and Co-Director of the Children’s Environments Research Group (Participation) - Presentation
- Carles Feixa, University of Lleida and researcher at the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (Leisure) - Presentation and background
- Roger Hart, City University of New York and Co-Director of the Children’s Environments Research Group (Environment) - Presentation
- Yamina Djacta, UN-Habitat - Presentation and background
- Carles Feixa, University of Lleida and researcher at the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (ICT) - Presentation
- Kenneth Land, Duke University and University of Texas (Intergenerational relations)
- DevInfo- A Database System to Monitor Human Development
Nicholas Pron, DevInfo UNICEF - Presentation - Youth Development Index
Mike Thiedke, United Nations Programme on Youth - Presentation - Summary and conclusion
- Agreements for follow up, adoption of the report and evaluation of the meeting
- Report of the meeting
UN sytem web sites: Statistics and indicators
FAO: Statistics Division
ILO: Bureau of Statistics
ILO: Global Employment Trends
ILO: Global Youth Employment Trends
ITU: Information and Communication Technology indicators
UNAIDS: Global summary of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in 2005
UNAIDS: A guide to indicators for monitoring and evaluating national HIV/AIDS prevention programmes for young people
UNDESA: Population Division, World Population Prospects
UNDESA: Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects
UNDESA: Statistics Division, Millennium Indicator Database
UNDESA: Statistics Division
UNDP: Human Development data
UNESCO: Institute for Statistics
UNESCO: Education for All statistics
UNFPA: country profiles
UNFPA: State of the World Population 2005, indicators
UNHCR: Refugee statistics
UNICEF: ChildInfo
UNICEF: DevInfo
UNICEF: Statistics
UNICEF: State of the World's Children 2005, data
UNODC: Crime and Drug statistics
World Bank: Data and statistics
WHO: World Health Statistics 2005