Engaging and Mainstreaming Youth in Development Agenda Youth Make it Happen

Abstract

Pakistan’s youth population is one of the fastest growing in the world. Currently the proportion of people between 15 and 29 years of age is 27.63%. In UNDP Pakistan, inclusion of Youth is being recognized as an important feature in order to move from good to great (G2G). This paper is an attempt to recommend actionable policy recommendations to mainstream youth in the development agenda of UNDP Pakistan. This paper contains:Part I – Background and Overview of Youth affairs in Pakistan. The concepts of youth mainstreaming and youth engagement, and outlines a brief statistical profile of youth population in Pakistan.Part II – National Policies and Reforms on Youth Affairs in Pakistan. Background and overview of National Youth Policy in Pakistan. Part III – UN and UNDP’s Focus on Youth. Analyzes the youth focused work of various UN agencies in Pakistan. By taking stock of their work, it enables the authors to identify UNDP’s comparative advantage to engage with youth. This ensures that the recommendations to follow are more integrated with ONE UN approach and also avoid unnecessarily overlaps with other UN agencies. Part IV – Youth engagement and mainstreaming in UNDP Pakistan. This section identifies and builds its recommendations on the comparative advantage of UNDP Pakistan.The recommendations are kept in line with an integrated review of the 15 priority areas of The National Youth Policy of Pakistan (NYP), the World Programme Action for Youth (WPAY) and the role of other UN agencies working in Pakistan. Based on the comparative advantage of UNDP identified in this paper, three focus areas are recommended for youth mainstreaming and engagement efforts. These include enabling prospects of income generation for the youth, support for character building of the youth and encouragement of social volunteerism in youth. The unit specific recommendations provided under these three focus areas for UNDP ensure provision of support for youth on three levels: Strengthening of youth-focused/based institutions in the country, provision of support for policy, advocacy and awareness on youth affairs and support for youth focused pilot initiatives.These recommendations are followed by a plan of action for the country office in the short, medium and long term.