Graça Machel speaks at Youth 2030: The Generation of Unlimited Partnership
The UN Youth Strategy was officially launched and introduced to the public and decision makers, leaders, influencers, private sector, foundations and youth organizations and networks. All were galvanized to invest and voice their support to the implementation of the Strategy. The Youth2030 Generation Unlimited Partnership is launched as one of the first new actions of the UN Youth Strategy. The partnership will contribute to delivering the UN Youth Strategy, creating synergies across partners to mobilize support and maximize results for young people. The significance of this comes from how the world now has more young people than ever before – of the 7.2 billion people worldwide, over 3 billion are younger than 25 years making up 42% of the world’s population. About 1.2 billion of these young people are adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years. Adolescence is a critical time of life. It is a time when people become independent individuals, forge new relationships, develop social skills and learn behaviour that will last the rest of their lives. It can also be one of the most challenging periods.
As a result, this event brought together 600 inspiring young people, Heads of State and Government, Private Sector, Civil Society leaders and celebrities, presenting commitments through tangible means, solutions or ideas aiming at facilitating increased global, regional and country level action to address the needs and advance the rights of all young people as well as a means to build a better, more sustainable and peaceful world, as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
As a UNICEF Young Leader Champion, Mrs. Machel, in her speech, expressed her concern about the future facing young people and highlighted the need to link the skills and employability aspects of the agenda clearly with quality education and skills training. Then went on to suggest a useful approach which could be used to select a few countries to intensely engage and partner with so that they could show progress and help drive the agenda on the continent. Some of the speakers that Mrs. Machel spoke alongside of where, UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem, the Director of Somalia Peace Centre Ilwad Elman and Tony Elumelu, Nigerian Entrepreneur, to name a few.