GENEVA (ILO News) – The ILO is holding events in 46 countries around the world throughout March and April 2012 to hear young people’s views on the alarming youth employment situation.

75 million youth worldwide are currently unemployed and more than 150 million young people are living on less than $1.25 a day. The ILO has warned that this situation risks creating a “lost generation” and is a threat to social cohesion.

For this reason, youth employment will be the main theme of the annual International Labour Conference in June, and the ILO wants to hear young people and reflect their ideas and experience in the debate.

In the run-up to the annual Conference, the ILO is consulting young people from Beirut to Bangkok, from Lima to Lusaka, during March’s “Youth Employment Month”. The national consultations will culminate in a major Youth Forum in Geneva in May, with some one hundred young people from employers’, workers’ and youth organizations from across the world taking part. The key issues discussed at the Forum will be presented at the Conference which brings together representatives from governments, employers and workers.

The conversation has already started on social media networks where young people from across the world are sharing their views on the ILO’s Facebook and Twitter platforms: www.twitter.com/ilonews. A young person in Sweden says that for years, youth has been overlooked by people in power. And a Facebook member in India believes that “creating opportunities for youth to start and sustain their own enterprises is a way of eliminating unemployment”.

From youth entrepreneurships to school-to-work transitions, a wide range of issues are being discussed on the community page entitled “What About Young People?”: www.facebook.com/youth.ilo.

For more information, contact the ILO programme on Youth Employment at youth@ilo.org