At the first official meetings here of the Youth Caucus – the loose network of youth groups that have come from around the world to represent the youth interest in sustainable development at the World Summit – discussions have been heavily focused on time-consuming organisational matters,
The geographic imbalance of delegates to the International Youth Summit held in South Africa last week has created a tense atmosphere in the Caucus, a situation set to worsen with many more young people arriving who are completely green to the whole youth process.
Nevertheless, the Caucus is currently trying to pull itself together and achieve as much consensus as possible in order to present its position to the entirety of the Summit. And with such complex issues as water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity (the ‘WEHAB’ or ‘Big Five’ set of issues as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has coined it), and their underlying issues of consumption, corporate accountability, war and human security, the youth have a lot of ground to cover.
On Sunday, the Youth Caucus met early in the day to organise. They broke up regionally into seven groups with a focal point for each. Other breakout group focused on lobbying and media with the mission of getting the youth message across at this conference. Two drafting committees were also formed to put together the official youth statement for the general plenary.
The drafting committee is said to have the most difficult job. Trying to adapt the opinions of youth platforms drafted several times over the course of the year into a consensual declaration to decision-makers has emerged as a contentious issue for the Caucus.
A proposal for “international youth solidarity” with citizens of conflict regions of the world, such as Cuba and Palestine, remains unresolved in the youth declaration draft that came out of the International Youth Summit.
Many members of the Youth Caucus have suggested that this will likely be removed entirely from the final youth declaration, driving caucus facilitators’ concerns over whether the declaration will be appropriately representative of the issues raised last week.
Soren Meinert of Denmark’s Nature and Youth group, says that current co-facilitator Leif Holmberg of Sweden is “doing a great job” so far, but expressed concern that so much of the Caucus’ time is being taken up with concerns about the declaration, aggravated by the number of new members unfamiliar with past progress.
“This is kind of a heavy load to throw on new people,” he said. “Our strength is not in sitting in here and talking…youth’s strength is action. Of course we have to keep the formal pressure on, but we should be working on the outside doing actions”.
Nigerian youth Uwem Otu was more confident in the ability of the Caucus to achieve results in their discussions. “There are lots of discussion and arguments that take place in the groups, but there is consensus.”
But organizational concerns are echoed in other circles. Samir Luther of SustainUS, the peak youth NGO body regretfully stated that youth are not as prepared as many of the other major groups to participate in such a massive conference.
“Governments should take on a larger role in preparing and bringing youth to a negotiation like this. Youth need to have as large a voice as the other stakeholder groups, and it’s hard to achieve this if you are constantly bringing in new youth who are entirely new to the process.”
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