On 13-17 October 2015 the city of Sochi, Russian Federation will host the fifth meeting of the Youth Employment Network members within the framework of the project “Partnerships for Youth Employment in the CIS” implemented by the ILO Moscow Office in partnership with the Russian oil company LUKOIL. The event will bring together tripartite participants from all nine Network countries as well as representatives from the three Russian regions targeted under the “Partnerships for Youth Employment” project.

As part of the project, the ILO Moscow Office conducts Peer Reviews on youth employment in nine countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where participating countries review and assess each other’s youth employment policies, thereby promoting cross-country cooperation and sharing good practices. The objective of these peer reviews exercises is to produce recommendations that will be endorsed by the members of the network, followed by discussions at country level leading to the adoption or revision of policies and programmes.

The meeting will present the results of the third peer review round, which took place in Azerbaijan in September 2015 with the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan as the reviewing countries. Participants will also discuss a toolkit on conducting peer reviews and elaborate a plan for further peer review rounds. Moreover, the agenda will include sessions on the analysis of the labour market information.

As expected, the conference will enhance the capacity of the Ministries of Labour, Public Employment Services and social partners of the participating countries to design and implement more efficient policies and programmes for youth employment.