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#wcy2014Why is WCY2014 important?

#wcy2014

08/05/2014

The Road goes ever on and onDown from the door where it began.Now far ahead the Road has gone,And I must follow, if I can.

I can’t help but wonder if Tolkien ever made the journey from Co-lombo to Hambantota, because this is precisely what it feels like. Hambantota, for those who are unaware, is down at the south-ern end of Sri Lanka, quite near the edge of the island. It’s about 4 hours’ journey from Colombo, and it was where the WCY2014 Opening Ceremony was held.

It’s easy to diss the event. Popping up on my newsfeed are accusa-tions that the whole event is a waste of taxpayers money. People have called it a marketing stunt. And I still have no idea what the heck that dance with the animals and the faux-Lion-King music was.But whether anything quantifiable, implementable and worth-while comes out of this or not, I can still appreciate the whole thing. We’re presented on the world media as a third-world na-tion with a history of violence – pretty much the only real positive things about this country are on the tourism blogs. Regardless of

our not-so-witty political satire, we’re still on a lot of bad lists. WCY is changing this. You can see it happening, in the way peo-ple talk, the way they discuss being here. It’s a colossal engine for people from all over the world to actually connect with Sri Lanka on a personal level. There’s a huge amount of politics involved, as always, but this time it isn’t a couple of old dignitaries making the rounds – it’s a whole TON of young people from all over the world, people who will some day end up making or influencing the really big decisions.

Ever heard of the term “millenial?” If not, Google it. That’s what this conference is: a millenial forum. There’s a huge amount of people from all over tweeting, instagramming and sharing Sri Lan-ka all over the web – and in the process, kicking the world’s public opinion of us up a notch. Hey look: they’re actually NOT commit-ting human rights violations. Phew. That’s epic.

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So instead of dissing, let me sum it up (from a surface, attendee perspective): it was epic. 700-odd delegates. A massive, beautiful venue, crowned with a drummers, hornblowers, exquisite ladies in sarees, stilt-walkers – a greeting of such cultural splendour that a perehara would have been put to shame. Indeed, as one Burmese delegate told me: “I’ve never seen such a rich culture: any country would be hard put to compete.”

Inside, we were given a splendid address by Dr John W Ashe, Presi-dent of the UN General Assembly, which has already been covered extensively and will probably be blogged about much later. The President, MahindaRajapakse, strode down the aisle to the collec-tive flashing of a thousand phone cameras and hammered out an excellent speech. No surprises there – he’s a brilliant orator. Namal-Rajapakse wasn’t there – apparently he was off in Japan on a rugby

jaunt. Duty, the compere called it. Surely there are others who can take his place in the rugby team: I doubt, however, that he can be replaced in something like this. Opportunity: missed.

Of course, it turned into an #iPhoneparty when the President walked in. Apparently instagram is not just an affliction of Sri Lan-kan smartphone users.

The true highlight of the show, though, was the people in it. A vast sea of delegates stretching from one end of the auditorium to the other. People from every country, race, color, religion, clustered together, each, in their own way, an avatar of the land they hailed from. That was an amazing sight, not one I’m likely to forget. And interspersed with them, the gray T-shirts of the 500-odd volunteers running hither and thither to make things work, doing their magic from the shadows. Bravo. Onwards to the next three days.

Thankfully, the rest of the event’s to be held at the BMICH, a saner lo-cation. Article written by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Photos taken by Haalik Abdul Azeez

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As part of the first round of plenary roundtables today, the “Achieving Good Governance and Accountability” session drew in a large crowd of international youth delegates and other in-terested parties. With good governance and accountability being one of the seven foundations of the 2014 World Conference on Youth, the plenary focused on challenges to young people’s abil-ity to participate in the policy making and implementation pro-cessesin their respective countries.

Convening in breakout groups after the panel, the international youth delegates conceptualizedwhat “good governance” means to them. Their responses included:

• Fairly distributed resources and opportunities in society• Inclusive and anti-discriminatory polices • Bringing out the best of a country’s population• Decision-making and implementation of policies to benefit

the livelihood of citizens• System of effective leadership and management that allows

inclusive decision-making • Citizen involvement in their government’s political process

This input, along with outcomes of all other plenary roundtables with youth participation will be used to inform the Colombo Dec-laration on Youth, which will be published at the close of the con-ference and submitted to the UN Secretary General, and to the UN General Assembly.The panel consisted of: Hannah Smith - Policy & Advocacy Coor-dinatorat Restless Development, Elodie Beth Seo - Regional Anti-Corruption Advisor at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Asia Pacific Regional Centre, and Ursula McLackland – Secretary General of Universal Peace Foundation (Asia). However, it was the young people in the room who carried forward the conversation on how good governance should be defined.

(Read more of this article on Sally Mouakkad’s blog, cultureandtea.blogs-pot.com)

PACIFIC ISLAND REPRESENTATION AT THE WORLD CON-FERENCE ON YOUTH 2014

Colombo, Sri Lanka is buzzing with excitement as more than 1500 people gather from the 6th to the 10th of May for the World Con-ference on Youth 2014. With the theme “Mainstreaming Youth in the Post-2015 Development Agenda”, delegates of the Confer-ence aim to work together over the duration of the Conference to finalize an outcome document known as the Colombo Declara-tion on Youth.

The Conference will focus on foundations and thematic areas, covering a wide range of issues facing young people and their development.

There are a number of delegates from across the Pacific that are here to be the voices of their region. Delegates from Fiji, the Solo-mon Islands, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, are pre-pared to make connections between their authentic truths, as a young person in the Pacific working on development issues, and that of other young people across the globe.

I was fortunate enough to find sole Pacific Island Facilitator and fellow Fijian, 27 year old SevuloniRatu.

It was great to sit down with and discuss many things relating to the #WCY2014, as well as get to know who he is and his area of work back in Fiji.

His work in Youth Development in FijiSevuloni has dedicated a majority of his life to youth develop-ment. Most of his work is in the area of Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights. He started his journey in youth development when he was around 20 years old. Starting off his career as a peer educator with the Stepping Stone Program with the Pacific and Regional HIV and AIDS Project.

As a Peer Educator, he conducted trainings for mostly out of school youth in rural and remote communities in Fiji. The best thing about his job he says was being able to connect with a lot of young people in these communities providing them with advice and support on Sexual Reproductive Health and their Rights.Sevuloni’s first paid job was with the Fiji Red Cross in 2007. He joined the team as their HIV Program Team Leader basically look-ing after the HIV Program with young people in rural and remote communities. He worked in this area till 2009.

(Read more on Fenton Luton’sblog,lifebyfentonluton)Young and at risk

Good Governance &Political Participation: This is What Young People Want

WCY on the BlogosphereGood Governance &Political Participation: This is What Young People WantBy: Sally Mouakkad, 2014 Social Media Fellow

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Introduce yourself?My name’s Luciano Frontelle, and I’m a journalist from Brazil. I was self-funded, invited here by the by the Brazilian government and the sl government. I’m focused on the Brazilian participa-tion, so I’m basically posting information about what Brazil is doing here.

What’s Brazil paying the most attention to? Brazil’s mostly focusing on gender equality, good governance and accountability and ethical gestures.

On the subject of WCY as an event - what do you think is the good part of the whole show? Well, we have a big structure here. The place, the venue, the logistics, it is a big event. Nobody’s cramped for space.

The bad?We have been experiencing some miscommunication problems, such as I had no hotel to stay for 11 hours after I arrived, I still don’t have an accreditation, our Head of Government wasn’t taken to the Opening Ceremony.That’s bad. Though the organizers recognized this and it is solved.

What do you expect from WCY in terms of end results? End results expected: I expects the final declaration really im-pacts the general assembly: i expect too move forward from the perspective of human rights, poverty eradication, gender equal-ity, and I really hope that we can turn this declaration into re-election into the countries.

Just a few minutes ago, Sri Lankan Parliamen-tarian Mohan LalGrero expressed his opinion that all of the issues that the youth are facing - poverty, racism, gender inequality and so on - are linked to education. Do you agree?

I think it really depends on what kind of education we’re talking about. What we’re aiming here is that YOUTH is connected with everything right now, and I think that should be our focus, be-cause if we keep looking at the teams but not at the generation, it’s pointless. If the education doesn’t match what we need it to be, it’s pointless.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: an eye from Brazil By YudhanjayaWijeratne

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I wantTo expand my knowledge and take what I learnt back to my country.Buntubwimana Mari Appoline, 28, Rwanda“

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The conference is culturally rich. It is amazing to learn about the differ-ent hopes and struggles of so many young people. Hopefully we can all positively influence the outcome of this conference.Eman Sharabati, 28, Palestine

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Allows youth to take charge of the old systems that are resistant to change. We should take a stand to make way for our future.Nikolai, 24, Barbados

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Why is WCY2014 important?

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Youth are the drivers of development - they are key part-ners of development.therefore it is important to collect their ideas and raise their voice together as one world.Chanthu, 26, Sri Lanka, Youth Activist North SL and Youth Parliamentarian

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“ The conference focuses on issues revolving around marginalized youth- including LGBT

rights - most of which are criminalized in many countries. It also emphasizes the importance of marginalized women and

allows meaningful participation.Sathya Bashi, 27, Sri Lanka, member of

UNYAP

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“Through WCY2014 we hope to address the health problems faced by young people. Especially mental health and Sexual

reproductive health that are not given adequate attention. We also hope to ad-dress the many disparities in access to

health care.Dr. Yogya Ratnayake, 24, member of

UNYAP

WCY2014 allows youth from all over the world to communicate and maintain relations. It also focuses on important themes related to youth.Aibek, 24, Kyrgyzstan and Aizhan, 26, Kyrgyzstan

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By Vera Djemelinskaya, djema.wordpress.com

“Because it’s a marginalized youth session, I’d like to be as in-clusive as possible,” opened the roundtable facilitator Jeffry Acaba. – “Can everyone understand English?”

Surprisingly no one complained about the language. What did become one of the major points of discussion, was access of young people living with HIV too health services. “5,4 million of adolescents live with HIV,” noted representative of the UNAIDS Asia-Pacific Support Team Aries Valeriano.

More shocking numbers came from the Youth Lead: 95% among new HIV infections in the Asia-Pacific region are young people, said regional coordinator Thaw Zin Aye. Moreover, ac-cording to her 60% of the female sex workers are under age of 25 and are not easily included in HIV treatment because of the age restrictions in access to sexual health.

The problem derives from both flaws in legislation, as well as stigma and discrimination creating more barriers for getting quality treatment: “19 countries in Asia-Pacific criminalize same sex relations.” The topic was further developed by the UNFPA Bangladesh representative Argentina Matavel: “If a person with disabilities asks for a contraceptive, the first reaction of the health worker is to shame them and laugh”.

Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking are just several names among many more celebrities, which were either born with or developed very serious disabilities in early age. “De-pends on where you were born - 15% of the world population lives with disabilities and 4/5 of those are in developing world.”According to Ms. Argentina Matavel, none of the MDGs indica-tors mentions people with disabilities: “Family sees them as a curse, a failure. They hide disabled child or abandon.”

The breakout sessions brought up more specific aspects. “I was really glad that delegates focused on intersectionality and non-exclusion of young marginalized groups from each other,” con-cluded facilitator Jeffry Acaba after the session.

Young and at risk

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