Regional Workshop

onUNDP Youth Strategy

April 2

Tunis, Tunisia

Background and rationale

The youth-led popular contestations in the Arab region have invigorated discussions on development challenges and their root causes. Youth lie at the center of this discussion as they are not only seen as drivers of this call for change, butalso as beneficiaries of it. The Arab region is home to the youngest population in the world “with more than 100 million between ages of 15 and 29.”[1] Youth are demanding responsive political systems and social justice as much as they seek equitable economic opportunities. Meeting these demands ina region with the most complex and long-standing conflicts and highest youth unemployment rate in the world requires multifaceted approaches and policy centered on youth empowerment.[2]

The United Nations Secretary-General has made working with and for young people one of his top priorities in his Five-year Action Agenda. Recognizing the importance of united action from the UN system to help advance work on youth development, a System Wide Action Plan (SWAP) was created aiming at a more coherent, comprehensive and integrated approaches.Several UN entities have youth specific strategies, including UNICEF, UNFPA, ILO, the World Bank, and others. For UNDP, young men and women are equally a priority as their full involvement is vital to achieving sustainable development. For this reason, UNDP isdeveloping a Youth Strategy, to be launched in 2014 to guide youth programming at the country level.

Taking the opportunity of the production of the new UNDP Youth Strategy, while also acknowledging the need to give greater focus to youth of the Arab region, the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) aims to convene a workshop to chart priorities and solidify a vision for work on youth. To note, the UNDP Youth Strategy is aligned to the Strategic Plan and includes outcome areas in Youth Economic Empowerment, Civic and Political Empowerment and Resilience Building.Though this Youth Strategy is new, work on youth is not. UNDP has for many years workedwith and on young people’ issues. To help reflect on youth work, in 2012, the Regional Cairo Centre organized a workshop to support youth programming and implementation of governance related projects. Now, building on this, the Bureau of Development Policy is organizing in 2014, another global workshop (in the Arab region) to take stock of youth-governance related projects and support implementation. Therefore, building on these meetings, RBAS is organizing a regional workshop that is two-fold: to introduce and discuss concepts and implementation of the UNDP Youth Strategy through an RBAS Action Plan and to take stock and share experiences of youth programming amongst UNDP youth focal points.

Objective

To build a common understanding of the UNDP Youth Strategy amongst Arab States youth focal points and to develop an RBAS vision and priorities for work on youth which incorporates identifying partners and resources and needed capacity building plans.

During the duration of the workshop, participants will:

  • Take stock of work on youth in the Arab region while identifying best practices and challenges;
  • Identify entry points along the 3 outcomes areas of the youth strategy for country office;
  • Identify and explore potential partners and resources;
  • Identify capacities required for UNDP staff, National Partners and NGOs;
  • Provide recommendations for theRBAS Action Plan on Youth.

Participants

UNDP Delegation 3-4:

(1)Focal Point for Youth within the country office OR staff currently supporting an ongoing youth initiative. This individual may or may not be the formally designated Focal Point for Youth within the country office. If the Youth focal point is not the DGGTTF focal point, both are invited.

(2)Local or national counterpart (e.g. partner within the Ministry for Youth) of an ongoing or planned youth initiative.

(3)Youth based organization or youth expert – well established and reputed in the country, and preferably an existing or potential partner and/or technical resource. In line with UNDP’s definition of youth, the participant would be a maximum of 35 years old.

To the extent possible, the delegation should be gender-balanced.

Resource People: Youth experts from the public and private sectors.

Draft agendain Annex 1

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Annex 1: Draft agenda

DAY 3 RBAS convened meeting on youth: Role out of Strategy in Arab region
Note: Days 1 & 2 are led by BDP, and the region specific workshop will convene immediately after day 2.
Time / Session description / Notes / Format
(details will be captured in session guidelines)
0900 – 1000 / Youth in the Arab Region: One-fifth of the population
Expert Panel
This session will highlight the overall situation of Youth in the Arab Region to frame the overall discussion for the 1-day workshop. More specifically it will:
-Define Arab youth
-Highlight Youth Status in Region (Statistics and Demographic trend: social, political and economic)
-Highlight impact of “Arab Spring” on youth and their expectations
-Present Key Challenges and Opportunities (discussion between panelist and Q&A) / Results to achieve: All participants have a common understanding of definition of Youth, and overall status of youth.
(Distributed before meeting) Staff are provided with existing resources of information of youth in Arab region, in addition to a list of key network and partners.
This section frames the discussion / Moderator
Panel of experts:
1. Ahmed Al Hendawi
2. JadChaaban
3. Young person from one of the country delegations
4. UNDP Youth Focal Point
followed by Q&A
The panelist on stage will be sitting on sofas, and everyone on the floor will be on round tables.
1000 - 1030 / Coffee break
1030 - 1200 / Taking Stock of Youth work in the Arab Region
This session will focus specifically on taking stock of the experiences of UNDP CO work on youth, identifying opportunities and best practices as well as challenges from Arab states but also from around the globe. Taking this information into account this session aims to also identify entry points for Arab states in each of the outcome areas of the UNDP Youth Strategy (5 minute presentation and 15 minutes discussion):
-Economic Empowerment of Youth (demand and supply for labor, policy development and support)
-Civic and political empowerment of youth (national youth advisory boards and youth parliamentary/council, youth branches in political parties)
-Resilience-building for youth (youth mobilization in disaster preparedness, relief work, peacebuilding, and state-building / Result to achieve: participants have clear understanding of concrete interventions, best practices and challenges for each outcome.
Best practice will be presented and challenges discussed for each outcome. (We will choose this in advance and ask focal points to do country specific presentations. Everyone will be asked to do a presentation for this session to be uploaded, but then only a selected few will be presented).
Some questions to consider:
-While youth are generally cross cutting such as gender, HIV/AIDS etc should there be a specific project that is dedicated tocoordinate with the youth issues from social, political, economic angle? It would be nice to hear some recommendations on this from RBAS and other country offices.
-Important to engage youth in the project formulation processes?
-How do we create an enabling environment for youth. Legal frameworks that allow for various forms of civil society organizations to emerge and be registered are essential, are there successful experiences where UNDP worked with government counterparts in advocating this subject, as well as sharing international best practices?National youth policies support, is it UNDP’s comparative advantage?
Facilitator to start with clarification questions.
This section gives examples of what is currently being done well or not well. / Moderator
Presenter for each outcome area:
1. Youth focal point
2. Youth focal point
3. Youth focal point
Suggested Discussants:
1. Geoff Prewitt
2. Faten Tibi/Renata BDP
3.Global Youth Organization
4. Education For Employment
5. Other external partners
1200 - 1300 / Partnership and Resource mobilization
This session will look at existing and future partners in the region. Participants to explore who could support the work on youth. This session will also address the resource mobilization possibilities. / Questions to consider:
Should we work to find a way to target and involve informal CSOs with a fluid and less hierarchical membership base? For UNDP this means moving away from the concept of civil society as service provider for UNDP, to seeing it as a partner in development. UNDP needs to adapt to the needs of the partners, rather than expecting them to adapt to our policies? / Moderator
Suggested Panelist:
1. National Partner from one country
2. NGO from CO (youth)
2. Khaled Louhichi (Regional expert)
3. Rep from a Regional Youth entity
4. Arab Funds
4. Kawtar Z. UNV
5. Youth focal point
6. EFE
1300 - 1400 / Lunch
1400 - 1500 / Group Work
Participants will be asked to break into three of the Youth Strategy outcome groups and produce country specific entry points using the three-pronged approach:
-Engage and influence through advocacy and leadership
-Support through capacity development
-Act and sustain through support to national policy development and programmes implementation
Participants should identify potential programmes/projects at National or Regional level :
-At least one project idea per CO
-At least one project idea at Regional level / Results to achieved:
Focal points will be organized in three groups and each outcome will be represented by three typologies: NCC, MIC, LDC and transition. Each group will have a facilitator, and by the end produce a list of key entry points under each area.
We should consider here, for those countries that have one, how to link national strategies with RBAS Action Plan. / Each group will have a facilitator and rapporteur.
1500 – 16:00 / Capacity Development Plan
This session will address what capacities are needed to achieve the type of interventions we seek to have. The participants will be divided into three groups: UNDP, National government partners, and youth organizations. Each group will ask:
-What skills do we need to deliver?
-What capacities need strengthening?
-What are the existing potential resources/networks that can support to address the identified needs? / Results: Participants to clearly articulate what is required to deliver under the outcome areas, and what skills-building interventions required to enhance their capacities.
1. UNDP will focus on internal organizational readiness
2. Youth organizations will focus on support they require to be effective actors nationally and locally
3. National government partners will outline capacities they need to respond to their country needs. / Moderator will begin by presenting the topic and offer guidance for the flow of the session and sought outcome.
Group work followed by presentation of main discussion covered in each group followed by Q&A.
1600-1630 / Coffee break
1630- 1730 / Presentation of the outcome groups
Consolidation of the key components of the Arab Region Action plan
1730-1800 / Conclusions: RBAS Action Plan on Youth and Way Forward
1930 – 2130 / Dinner and social event

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[1]AHDR Research Paper: Expanding youth opportunities in the Arab region, pg. 6

[2] Arab region’s youth unemployment rate was 28% in 2012 compared to 13% internationally.