The 2nd High-Level Panel Meeting, June 30-July 1, 2003

Two years after the 1st High-Level Panel Meeting this meeting marked the launch of a second, more operational phase of the Youth Employment Network focussing on operational activities, marked by growing impact and higher visibility on the ground and dedicated National Action Plans engaging a wider and active constituency.

At this meeting the Panel proposed five new steps on policy and process to be taken by the Youth Employment Network - involving the core institutions of the UN, the World Bank and the ILO, together with national governments, economic and social partners and youth organisations - to promote youth employment and to fight unemployment and underemployment:

• Endorse the 2003 Policy recommendations presented in this report on Employability, Equal opportunities, Entrepreneurship and Employment creation;

 • Endorse a plan to encourage national governments to translate the 2003 recommendations into action through National Review and Action Plans on youth employment;

 • Invite Workers' and Employers' organisations together with civil society to participate in the design and implementation of these action plans in order to provide young people with access to decent and productive work;

 • Invite youth organisations to advise in the design of youth employment programmes, to contribute to the implementation of these programmes, to help hold governments accountable vis-à-vis their commitments on youth employment and work with the high Level Panel in an ongoing advisory capacity;

 • Endorse an initiative for "twinning" and regional cooperation in mobilising funding for national youth employment programmes.

Youth representatives and other partners with practical experience on youth employment where full participants in the meeting.

• Agenda 
• Participants List 
• Press 
• Photos 
• UN Secretary-General's comments (audio file, size 1,113 kb).

ILO Director-General's comments:
• opening remarks
• introduction of the Secretary-General  
• closing remarks

• Report of the Meeting  
• Recommendations of the second High-Level Panel meeting. 

Quotes from the event: 

• "The prevailing policy advice on youth employment is not working. If it were we would not have the level of unemployment of youth we see today. We cannot expect economic growth to bring jobs naturally, to succeed we have to put job creation and enterprise creation at the very forefront of policy making."

ILO Director General Juan Somavia

• "The youth around this table are a tremendous resource. Young people are not just leaders for tomorrow, they are partners for today. Engage them. Listen. Build together. Let's get beyond lip service."

ILO Director General Juan Somavia

• "Investing in decent and productive work for young people is both a strategy for economic and social development and our quest for national and collective security. We have seen, all too often, the tragedy of youthful lives miss-spent in crime, drug abuse, civil conflict and even terrorism."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

• "Our challenge now is to move from the excellent policy work that has been done to a new phase of action at the country level."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

• "Young people should be seen as engines of growth rather than a problems to be addressed"

Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, Managing Director, The World Bank