African youth encouraged to champion multilateralism for a better future

Addis Ababa, April 28, 2024 (FBC) – Young people should participate in the reform of the United Nations system to deepen global cooperation and protect their interests, the Assistant Secretary-General of Youth Affairs, Felipe Paullier, has said.

The Assistant Secretary-General made the remark in his keynote address at the African Youth Consultative Forum on the UN Summit of the Future 2024 held in Addis Ababa.

The African Youth Consultative Forum on the UN Summit of the Future is a preparatory event aimed at galvanizing the participation of African youth in shaping the outcomes of the upcoming UN Summit of the Future.

The Summit of the Future (September 2024) is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance.

Paullier said on the occasion that the youth must be part of the discussion process in the countdown to the Summit of the Future because multilateralism augurs well for youth inclusion in securing a better future.

Describing the Summit of the Future as an opportunity for transformation in the UN system and the future of the youth, Paullier said the world needs a different multilateral system because ‘we are not going to be able to address the challenges of our grandchildren if we continue to work with a system that was designed by our grandparents’.

“We need more than ever your voices in this process, we need your voice addressing your governments so that the positions governments take in the Summit of the Future represent the voices of the young people at the country level,” said Paullier, emphasizing that the Summit was an opportunity to act and foster meaningful engagement by the youth.

The youth in Africa need to create a mechanism for meaningful engagement and unpack what is meaningful engagement because meaningful youth engagement is about addressing issues that affect young people, he noted.

“Meaningful engagement is about how to address the issues of unemployment that affect young people in this region and across the world, we need to unpack meaningful engagement processes to address mental health challenges and to address effectively the climate crisis.”

Paullier invited the youth to support an open letter recently issued by the Youth Affairs office to global leaders highlighting the need for transformation in multilateralism and the urgency of young people to have meaningful engagement.

“The problem is not in young people, the problem is in the institutions we have. We have 19th-century institutions to respond to the challenges of the 21st century, so we need to transform these institutions and if we do not transform them we are ruined,” he said.

The Summit of the Future is expected to reaffirm existing commitments including to the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Charter, and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people’s lives.

The high-level event will bring together UN Member States, UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), academic institutions, the private sector, and youth under the theme, ‘Summit of the Future: Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow’. The Summit, according to ENA, aims to forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and what we can do today to secure it.