Youth Unemployment on Y20 Summit Agenda
14 July 2014 at 11:04 am
Rising levels of youth unemployment will be the key issue to be addressed at this year’s Y20 Youth Summit in Sydney.
The four-day summit, which closes on July 15, will include five delegates from each G20 nation, and will focus on presenting a strong policy proposal to take to the global leaders on global economic issues.
The “policy ask” will be framed around the three themes: youth unemployment, global mobility and sustainable development.
A communiqué, the outcome of months of consultation and policy discussion, will be presented to Treasurer Joe Hockey after the summit and submitted to the G20 Meeting in November.
“The ideal outcome of the entire summit will be to see world leaders commit to a concrete action plan to address youth unemployment,” Yassmin Abdel-Magied, from the Y20 Planning Group, said.
“The first step is to get youth unemployment on the agenda, and the next and most important, is to get some action around finding solutions.”
According to the Y20 Planning Group, globally, more than 651 million young people are not in employment, education or training and in every G20 nation, the rate of youth unemployment is double or triple that of adults.
Y20 Planning Group Chair Holly Ransom said this was a trend that needed to be immediately addressed.
“Youth unemployment can be looked at as being a catalyst for many other difficulties experienced throughout life,” Ransom said.
“Putting an end to it as soon as we can means other issues affecting populations can be addressed more efficiently also.”
The Y20 Planning Group said given the strong statistics around the issue of youth unemployment and its significant impact throughout the world, it was critical young people were a part of forming solutions.
The other delegates representing Australia are Jonathan Pavetto, Laura Sobels, Lachlan Cooke and Timothy Cameron.
The Y20 is the official youth engagement platform of the G20, and is one of the five engagement groups that will meet in Australia in 2014 as part of the Australian Government’s presidency of the G20.
The role of the summit is to provide an opportunity for young people across G20 nations to debate pressing economic issues that face young people and offer recommendations to the G20 world leaders.
For further information on the Y20 Summit, visit www.y20australia.com
Instead of discussing youth unemployment, it should be how our population came to be in overshoot of job creation, from excessive immigration- especially of skilled migrants and the heavy number of "temporary" migrants allowed to work in Australia. While our economy, since the mining boom, has been sluggish, we've had bumped up record immigration numbers! Young people are facing fierce competition for jobs, when training/education is unaffordable, and there are "skills shortages" that are bogus! Australians are not being given a "fair go" due to neo-liberal policies and a global market open-door approach to Australia's sovereignty. Migrants were welcomed and needed in the past when jobs were available, and we needed our country built, but not now! Immigration policies should streamlined according to economic conditions.