GLOBAL OVERVIEW

Youth are an asset - unemployment is the problem
By Steven Miller

There are more than 1 billion people in the world aged between 15 and 25. Nearly 40 per cent of the world's population is below the age of 20. Eighty-five per cent of them live in developing countries, where many are vulnerable to extreme poverty. And, the rate of urbanization is by far the greatest in developing countries. By 2015 it is expected that developing countries will account for over 75 per cent of the world's urban population.

The International Labour Office estimates that globally around 74 million young women and men are unemployed. They account for 41 per cent of the 180 million people in the world without jobs. Many more young people are working long hours for low pay, struggling to eke out a living in the informal economy. There are an estimated 59 million young people between 15 and 17 years of age who are engaged in hazardous forms of work. Young people actively seeking to participate in the world of work are two to three times more likely than older generations to find themselves unemployed.

World leaders resolved at the summit to "develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work". UN Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed the establishment of a Youth Employment Network with the heads of the World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Juan Somavia, Director-General of ILO (right) welcomes Mr. Kofi Annan to ILO headquarters in Geneva for their meeting on youth issues.Photo:© ILO

He visited the ILO headquarters in Geneva to chair the first panel of the network in July 2001 with Juan Somavia, Director-General of the ILO, and James Wolfensohn, the President of the World Bank. Mr. Annan called for both immediate action and long-term commitment to achieving the millennium goal on youth employment. He also invited the panel to advise him, and asked the ILO to take the lead in organizing the new network.

Following up on the recommendations of the network, a resolution on promoting
youth employment, co-sponsored by 106 UN Member States, was unanimously adopted at the UN General Assembly last December. It urges governments to prepare national reviews and action plans on youth employment and to involve youth organizations and young people. It also calls on the ILO, the World Bank, the UN Secretariat, and other relevant specialised agencies, to assist and support governments in their analysis and evaluation of progress.

Like Mr. Annan, the high-level panel views youth as an asset, rather than as a problem. This is an important political message, particularly in view of the relationship between civil conflict and unrest, crime, HIV/AIDS and even terrorism. Given the growing concern with the problems with which young people are confronted and especially vulnerable, it is important to focus on unemployment _ and not on youth _ as the problem.
The question is how to empower the prime victim of urban unemployment to provide some solutions to the problem.

There are four areas here where cities have a comparative advantage in the quest to create employment. These are the regulatory environment, the informal economy, investment policies and the ability to create local-level alliances.

City governments are in a privileged position to review and even to design regulations governing zoning, establishment of small and medium-sized enterprises, public contracts and tendering procedures, so as to ensure that economic growth results in both more and better jobs.

At the 2002 International Labour Conference of the ILO, the informal economy was a subject for discussion. Twenty years ago, when the ILO first discussed this issue, there was a sentiment that the informal sector was a transitory phenomenon, which would gradually disappear as development grew. But not only is employment in the informal economy on the rise, but the boundaries between the formal and informal economies are becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore, a strategy to upgrade youth employment in the informal economy needs to be carefully designed to exploit positive linkages and to discourage negative linkages between the two economies.

In the closely related investment area, infrastructural investments present an enormous opportunity to create new sources of employment for young people in developing countries, especially those in an urban setting where the needs for slum upgrading and infrastructural improvements are enormous.

Investments can be targeted towards urban poor neighborhoods, be they in the decaying peri-urban areas or in the inner city. Therefore, employment-intensive investment policies can be harnessed to improve both productivity and living and working conditions in the urban informal sector.

City governments have a unique perspective on the ability of local-level partnerships to foster alliances for job creation. One form of alliance can be that which is embodied in the ILO's own tripartite structure, between employers, workers and governments who all have a common interest in job creation.

Steven Miller is the Secretary of the UN Secretary General's Youth Employment Network.

If I had one wish for the new millennium, it would be that we treat this challenge as an opportunity for all, not a lottery in which most of us will lose. - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his report to the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000.

In the next 10 years 1.2 billion young women and men will enter the working age population, the best educated and trained generation of young people ever, a great potential for economic and social development. The panel presents young people as a creative force today _ and not only tomorrow. It thus avoids speaking of young people as tomorrow's leaders, but rather as today's partners.

Its recommendations can be summarised in four principles: Employability by investing in education and vocational training for young people, and improving the impact of those investments; equal opportunities giving young women the same opportunities as young men; entrepreneurship making it easier to start and run enterprises to provide more and better jobs for young women and men; and employment creation by placing employment creation at the centre of macro-economic policy.

City governments are on the front line in the battle to create and protect jobs. They are the first to feel the negative impact of unemployment, but they are often inadequately prepared to develop policies and programmes to create jobs.

The question is how to empower the prime victim of urban unemployment to provide some solutions to the problem.

There are four areas here where cities have a comparative advantage in the quest to create employment. These are the regulatory environment, the informal economy, investment policies and the ability to create local-level alliances.

City governments are in a privileged position to review and even to design regulations governing zoning, establishment of small and medium-sized enterprises, public contracts and tendering procedures, so as to ensure that economic growth results in both more and better jobs.

At the 2002 International Labour Conference of the ILO, the informal economy was a subject for discussion. Twenty years ago, when the ILO first discussed this issue, there was a sentiment that the informal sector was a transitory phenomenon, which would gradually disappear as development grew. But not only is employment in the informal economy on the rise, but the boundaries between the formal and informal economies are becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore, a strategy to upgrade youth employment in the informal economy needs to be carefully designed to exploit positive linkages and to discourage negative linkages between the two economies.

In the closely related investment area, infrastructural investments present an enormous opportunity to create new sources of employment for young people in developing countries, especially those in an urban setting where the needs for slum upgrading and infrastructural improvements are enormous.

Investments can be targeted towards urban poor neighborhoods, be they in the decaying peri-urban areas or in the inner city. Therefore, employment-intensive investment policies can be harnessed to improve both productivity and living and working conditions in the urban informal sector.

City governments have a unique perspective on the ability of local-level partnerships to foster alliances for job creation. One form of alliance can be that which is embodied in the ILO's own tripartite structure, between employers, workers and governments who all have a common interest in job creation.

Steven Miller is the Secretary of the UN Secretary General's Youth Employment Network.