Noticed every year on 12 August, the Day attracts consideration to the rights, contributions and challenges of younger folks all over the place.
This 12 months’s theme, “Native youth motion for the SDGs and past,” emphasises how grassroots youth engagement is important to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and shaping extra simply, inclusive societies.
“Younger individuals are daring innovators, resilient organizers and important companions in attaining the Sustainable Growth Targets,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated in a message marking the day.
“They’re driving sustainable growth, constructing extra inclusive communities, forging peace and demanding a fairer, greener and extra simply future.”
Youth-led options work
Mr. Guterres additionally had a direct message to younger folks worldwide.
“To each younger individual: your voice, concepts and management matter,” he stated.
“Allow us to work collectively to assist youth-led options and construct a extra simply, peaceable and sustainable world, from the bottom up.”
A technology that believes…
At present’s younger individuals are coming of age at a second of extraordinary world change.
In line with UN information, half of the world’s inhabitants is 30 or youthful, a quantity which is anticipated to rise to 57 per cent by 2030. These beneath 25 as we speak will make up over 90 per cent of the worldwide prime-age workforce by 2050.
As well as, a global survey of over 27,000 respondents in 26 international locations on challenges confronted by folks in public lives revealed that 67 per cent imagine in a greater future, with 15 to 17-year-olds expressing probably the most optimism.
Regardless of their immense potential for good, younger folks proceed to face systemic challenges.
Younger males from the Rohingya neighborhood obtain electrician coaching at a refugee camp in southern Bangladesh.
Continual job scarcity
Youth unemployment, though at a 15-year low, nonetheless stands at 13 per cent globally.
Amongst 10 to 19-year-olds, one in seven expertise a psychological well being dysfunction. In low- and middle-income international locations, practically six in ten 10-year-olds can’t learn and comprehend a easy paragraph.
Worldwide Youth Day 2025 goals to spotlight not solely the urgency of those points, but additionally the options already being solid by youth themselves – of their communities, cities and international locations.
As Mr. Guterres emphasised: “International progress begins in communities. And in each nook of the world, younger individuals are main the way in which.”
Nairobi to host world commemoration
This 12 months’s official observance will happen in Nairobi, Kenya, organized in collaboration with UN-Habitat, the UN company centered on sustainable city growth.
Tuesday’s occasion will deliver collectively youth leaders, metropolis officers, policymakers and UN officers to showcase options and methods for strengthening youth engagement in native growth.
Worldwide Youth Day was first proclaimed by the UN Common Meeting in 1999, constructing on the World Programme of Motion for Youth adopted in 1995.
