prospects and mental health” and fuelling a risk of youth disillusionment.33 Although many countries have taken unprecedented measures to extend social safety nets, this has remained largely insufficient. The global economic recession and the changing economy, both induced by the pandemic, have exacerbated the challenges facing youth in accessing decent livelihoods, appropriate skills and support in the school-to-work transition. Meanwhile, youth are rarely engaged as full partners for an inclusive and sustainable recovery. Youth unemployment and underemployment are affecting human, economic and social capital, which weakens a sense of belonging and can trigger a cycle of intergenerational poverty, vulnerability and conflict. As the fastest growing demographic, youth are faced with inefficient economies and are bearing the brunt of the imminent effects of climate change on livelihoods. Millions of youth are taking perilous migration routes that are costing them their lives.34 Youth unemployment and underemployment, especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a sharp increase in mental health issues and suicide among young populations worldwide.35 Hence, youth economic empowerment is of ultimate urgency, and the costs and risks of not addressing it are too high to ignore. Young people face multiple forms of exclusion, including barriers to education and employment, poverty and exclusion from global, regional, national and local-level decision-making processes. For instance, the minimum age criteria for being elected as a member of parliament is 25 years in one third of countries globally.36 At programme or project level, youth are often grouped with children or adults, lacking opportunities or support to meet their specific rights, priorities and needs. This environment of exclusion fuels discrimination and violence.37 It is against this background that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes the critical role of youth as agents of change in achieving sustainable development and peace, and commits to listen to and act on young people’s views, to foster youth participation and empowerment in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
1.2 THE UNDP APPROACH TO YOUTH ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT This section describes the UNDP strategic approach to youth economic empowerment and how it is being operationalized in UNDP programmes as part of broader efforts to eradicate poverty. UNDP has long recognized the need to address youth economic empowerment as a leaver for poverty alleviation and youth participation in development processes. The UNDP approach is anchored in its organizational mandate and strategic plans. The last two strategic plans, for 2014–2017 and 2018–2021, implicitly position youth economic empowerment as straddling the UNDP focus areas of poverty reduction and good governance. UNDP expenditure for youth economic empowerment over 2015–2021 is estimated at around $866 million (corresponding to a yearly average of $124 million over the evaluation period).38 33 34 35 36 37 38
World Economic Forum, ‘The Global Risks Report 2021. 16th Edition’, 2021. UNDP Africa Blog. 2017. “Promise or Peril? Africa’s 830 Million Young People By 2050”, 12 August 2017. OECD 2021 Policy response to COVID-19, supporting youth mental health, 12 May 2021. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), ‘IPU Parline’, last updated December 31 2020. United Nations, ‘World Youth Report. Youth and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, 2018. This amount is an estimate of the UNDP investment in youth economic empowerment at the programmatic level. It corresponds to the expenditure of related projects identified over the period 2015-2021 based on the Power Bi Dashboard, applying the youth beneficiary marker and filtering youth in the project and output description. This was complemented by the UNDP youth project mapping directory from 2015 to 2017, since Power Bi’s project markers only cover projects (and outputs) for 2018 – 2021.
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUC TION
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