While youth confidence in vaccine development against COVID-19 varies across countries with different income-levels, the general trend in the global sample of youth indicated high levels of confidence, with only 8% of youth expressing disagreement with the statement that they are confident in sanitary measures to respond, manage and address the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Youth Cafe calls for strengthened multilateralism and a renewed commitment to democratic values, human rights, and health equity. The economic impacts of the outbreak are already being felt around the world, and the poor are being hurt disproportionately. To prepare for times of crisis, nations must look to redistribute wealth to ensure all peoples have adequate safety nets, and no one gets left behind.
The youth Cafe has partnered with United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth to create a platform that aims to give visibility to youth initiatives responding to COVID-19 and to the health, social, and economic consequences of the pandemic. To be part of the initiative one must be youth-led, with at least half the leadership positions being held by people who are 31 or younger, OR strongly youth or children-focused, with its project focusing on people who are 31 or younger.
We are excited to announce that 50 UN entities and 168 youth entities including The Youth Cafe have signed the UN IANYD statement on COVID 19 and Youth. UN MGCY played a role in helping to coordinate the process of writing this statement and is also a signatory. The United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (UN IANYD) is committed to goals enshrined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Programme of Action for Youth, and the UN Youth Strategy.
This paper draws on several months of national, regional, and continental youth consultations hosted by the African Union Office of the Youth Envoy (OYE) in collaboration with Africa CDC. These include the virtual youth consultations held from 23rd March 2020 to 11 June 2020; as well as focus group consultations carried out by member networks of the African Youth Front. The aim of these consultations were to collect opinions and recommendations from youth leaders, with a view to inform policy briefs that were shared with Africa CDC.
To write this report, The Youth Café and Sussex Writes at the University of Sussex joined forces to address the challenges that young people are facing due to COVID-19. With financial support from Ford Foundation, the Lockdown Live series was an initiative planned to create awareness about the global situation of the world in the wake of COVID -19.
COVID-19 is exposing and exacerbating the existing inequalities that put girls at increased risk of gender-based violence (GBV). Adolescent girls, particularly girls who are married, girls with disabilities and those living in humanitarian contexts face heightened risks, and often fall between services designed for adults and children. This policy brief includes program examples and makes concrete recommendations for UN actors, donors, national governments, humanitarian actors, and the media to ensure that risk factors for gender-based violence are prevented, mitigated against, and responded to as an urgent priority through COVID-19 to recovery.
Youth are identifying the challenges and needs in their communities, and moving rapidly to address them to get ahead of the pandemic as it hits the continent. At The Youth Cafe, we’re seeing inspiring and hopeful examples in our network of more than 50,000 youth. Youth know what is most needed in their communities; they have the ability to adapt and respond quickly to an emerging crisis situation; and youth in The Youth Cafe’s network have the digital skills, gender equality, and facilitation knowledge necessary to rapidly intervene where their communities need it most.
The increase in unemployment as a result of COVID-19 is expected to exceed the rise in rates of unemployment in the aftermath of the 2009 global financial crisis. Based on the 2009 experience, without targeted policy intervention, it is likely that youth will again be disproportionately affected by a global recession, with a higher percentage of young people being unemployed compared to adults, and a slower uptake of employment by young people during the recovery. In light of the threat to the livelihoods of many youth, it is crucial that measures to ease the financial impacts on households are comprehensive and sufficient to bridge the gap resulting from loss of earnings
