Advancing Young People’s Engagement and Meaningful Participation in the PROSPECTS Partnership

Young people make up a significant share of the forcibly displaced population, facing critical challenges in accessing education, training, and decent work, providing solutions or advocating for constructive change.

Despite these barriers, displaced youth show remarkable resilience and a strong commitment to contributing to their communities. They have the potential to drive positive change, foster peace, and build more inclusive societies. However, to unlock their potential, they must be meaningfully included in education, skills development, and employment initiatives.

The ILO recognizes that youth participation is essential for sustainable solutions. Young people have the right to be involved in decisions that shape their futures. Ensuring their inclusion in policy-making and program design is key to creating lasting opportunities and strengthening social and economic stability for displaced populations and host communities alike.

50% of all refugees are under 18 years old

Half of all refugees are under 18, and young adults aged 18–24 represent another 13%

UNHCR Global Trends report 2023

10M IDPs are between 15 and 24 years old

10 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are between 15 and 24 years old.

UNHCR Global Trends report 2023

Partners in Advancing Young People's Meaningful Participation & Engagement in Forced Displacement

Objectives

The objective is to empower and meaningfully engage young people in forced displacement contexts so that they develop their skills and confidence to lead socio-economic and cultural activities, start an enterprise, address protection concerns, volunteer in their communities, advocate on issues that are important to them, and provide input to programming, including PROSPECTS.

While this new initiative aims to improve how we work for and with youth across PROSPECTS countries, there are three focus countries, namely, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uganda.

Under this initiative, the ILO is committed to boosting the meaningful engagement of young people in forced displacement contexts by harnessing the nexus between youth employment and youth participation. It will bring its extensive experience working for and with youth on employment issues, as well as specific expertise on creating and promoting decent jobs, extending social protection, and advancing youth rights, voices, and agency.

Recognizing the inherent leadership skills, capacities and potential of young people, this activity area focuses on empowering them as individuals, facilitating their transition into decent work, supporting them to network, empowering them to lead their own initiatives in their communities, and facilitating opportunities for their advocacy.

This engagement and empowerment will contribute to their capacity to be self-reliant.
This objective focuses on building the capacity of PROSPECTS staff and partners to engage and partner effectively with young people, putting them at the front and centre of our interventions and working together with them as equal partners to make our programming more youth-inclusive and responsive. Through the development and rolling out of different training materials and packages, agency staff and partners will learn how to work with and for young people more effectively by recognizing young people’s agency, creating spaces and mechanisms for them to engage in programming decisions, and ceding power to them.