UN Summit of the Future – Action Days

Youth leads for a Future without Inequalities

Off-site Side-Event at the UN Summit of the Future Action Days

This interactive event gives young people the space to express their views on how we move from negotiations to concrete actions delivering on the 2030 Agenda and implementing the Pact for the Future.

Date: 21st September 2024 – 13-15 h EDT
Venue: Church Center of the United Nations 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
Second Floor (in-person with hybrid intervention possibility for speakers)
Please register here!

Objective
Young people around the globe are engaging and organizing for a sustainable and peaceful future without inequalities, for which both the SDGs and the Pact for the Future are crucial pillars. We propose a reinforced global youth coalition engaging young people, youth organisations, civil society, governments and others in a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver on the Pact for the Future. With this event, we seek to contribute and develop transformative actions focused on implementation of specific recommendations contained in the Pact for the Future. We want to give young people the space to express their views on how we move from negotiations to concrete actions.

Methodology
The event will feature opening remarks by all stakeholders, a keynote by young persons on their ideas for a reinforced global youth coalition and core principles for youth engagement and end in an interactive action oriented world café setting where in smaller groups core principles for global youth organizing will be discussed.

Interventions
Our distinguished experts include,

  • Stefan Pretterhofer, Deputy Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations in New York
  • TBC Government and Planning Commission Representatives of Tanzania, outlining the role of Tanzania in the fight against inequalities in cooperation with youth and civil society prospects
  • Walter Schuldt (virtual), Minister at the Permanent Mission of Ecuador to the UN in Geneva outlining the role of the international legal binding instrument on TNCs and other business enterprises negotiated at UN HRC for a equal economy
  • TBC Representative of UN Human Rights Council
  • Sameh Kamel, Major Group for Children and Youth, outlining MGCY work and future prospects
  • Elisabeth Stroh and Niki Foroutan, presenting demands from the Rebels of Change Austrian Youth Forum in UNOV
  • Jana Berchtold, UN Youth Delegate Austria, presenting youth delegates role at UN
  • Nuru S. Maro, GCAP Youth Group, representing global youth demands against inequalities
  • TBC Young Delegate of the Global People’s Assembly 2024

Facilitation: Gertrude Klaffenböck, Südwind Association for Development Policy and Global Justice

The side event is proposed by a coalition of the following co-organisers

  • UN Major Group Major Group for Children and Youth
  • Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP)
  • Südwind holding the UN ECOSOC Observer Status and being active in 3 regional groups of member states

Background
Children and young people worldwide are disproportionately affected by inequalities. While children comprise one third of the global population, they represent half of those struggling to survive on less than $2.15 a day. An estimated 333 million children live in extreme poverty (UNICEF). Working poverty affects as many as 169 million youth in the world (ILO). This is not only true in developing countries and on a global level but also in developed member states such as the EU where in 2022, 17.4 million young people (aged 15-29 years) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (EU Stats). Young people around the globe are engaging and organizing to change this. They work for a sustainable and peaceful future without inequalities, for which both the SDGs and the Pact for the Future are crucial pillars. Over 100 young people from Austria held their Rebels of Change Youth Forum at the end of May in United Nations Vienna in cooperation with UNIS, discussed the SDGs and the draft Pact and formulated their demands in a youth manifesto for reducing inequalities, deliver a more just economy, improvement of human rights implementation and the way to climate justice. Hundreds of Thousands of Young People are organised in organisations members of the Major Group on Children and Youth (MGCY), hundreds of young people are active in the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) around the world rising to end inequalities. Together they demand youth participation, sustainability and ending inequalities as crucial cornerstones of the Pact and the Summit of the Future.

Focus on core principles of the Summit of the Future at the side event
We will contribute and develop transformative actions focused on implementation of specific recommendations contained in the Pact for the Future such as:
– “Action 12. We will plan for the future and strengthen our collective efforts to reduce global inequalities and advance sustainable development beyond 2030.
– Action 39+40. We will strengthen meaningful youth participation at the national and international level
Para 63 (a) Ensure meaningful, inclusive and effective engagement of young people in United Nations relevant intergovernmental bodies and processes, taking into account the principles of equitable gender and geographical representation and non-discrimination.
(d) Request the Secretary-General to continue to develop core principles for meaningful, representative, inclusive and safe youth engagement in relevant intergovernmental processes and across the work of the United Nations, for the consideration of Member States

We focus on the themes and issues of the Summit and Pact for the Future especially 1) sustainable development and financing for development; 4) youth and future generations; 5) transforming global governance; 7) the Declaration on Future Generations

We are mainstreaming human rights and demonstrate a multi-stakeholder, gender-balanced and intergenerational approach in the side event planning and programming.