Commonwealth Youth Forum 2007

We, the delegates of the sixth Commonwealth Youth Forum, representing 47 Commonwealth member countries and territories, are pleased to report that we have held fruitful discussions under the theme of ‘Breaking Barriers: Unleashing Young People’s Potential for evelopment’. We thank our Ugandan hosts for this opportunity. We have committed ourselves to achieving substantial outcomes before young Commonwealth representatives meet again in Trinidad and Tobago in 2009 and ask you for your help in realising these. Young people make up more than half of the Commonwealth’s population. We must continue invest in young people as their involvement can ensure advancements for generations to come.

Recommendations for action

We urge the Commonwealth and member governments to support and facilitate developing member countries to adopt technologies and development processes geared towards fighting poverty, unemployment and environmental degradation. We are concerned by the recent lack of meetings of the Commonwealth Environment Ministers that previously occurred in the lead up to CHOGM. We believe that such meetings provide an important opportunity to ensure CHOGM continually focuses on environmental issues. In order to ensure the relevance of the Commonwealth’s work on environmental matters into the future, we, the young people of the Commonwealth, strongly commend to you our full participation within future CEMMs leading up to the 2009 CHOGM.

We urge the Commonwealth to work together with international bodies to promote trade policies which are fair, equitable and provide a level playing field for all countries, especially developing countries, by removing trade barriers and encouraging a stronger lobbying presence for the Commonwealth at international organisations like the World Trade Organisation.

As young people we do not have the same social, political and economic power as other demographics. Many of us are disproportionately affected by disease, hunger, poor sanitation and inaccessible health care. We feel that a high-level panel focusing on young people’s health issues in the Commonwealth, that is made up of young people, and reports directly to the Commonwealth Health Ministers’ Meeting would provide us with the opportunity to ensure that health policies are informed by grassroots input from young people and would assist us in mitigating the growing disparities in disease burden across the Commonwealth.

Young people are an integral part of peace building as well as peaceful social transformation. Violence and conflict has often come about when young people feel socially, economically and politically disenfranchised. In order to promote peace and understanding, structured facilitation between groups of disenfranchised young people must be supported. Further, young people should be encouraged to participate in peace building processes such as conflict and alternative dispute resolution initiatives and election observation.

In order to ensure the relevance of the Commonwealth to the future, we urge the Commonwealth to provide financial support to youth policies in line with the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Youth Empowerment, the Commonwealth Youth Programme and the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council. Also, to include young people meaningfully at all levels, especially in the Commonwealth Ministers’ Meetings. We would ask you to create meaningful and constructive mechanisms to engage us in policy making at national and global levels, for example through National Youth Councils.

Full communique

You can download the full 2007 Communique below.