Glob­ally, 85 per cent of the world’s young peo­ple live in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, and an ever-in­creas­ing num­ber of them are grow­ing up in cities. It is es­ti­mated that by 2030, as many as 60% of all ur­ban dwellers will be un­der the age of 18. All over the world, young peo­ple are find­ing it in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult to break into the labour mar­ket. Youth make up 25% of the global work­ing age pop­u­la­tion, but ac­count for 43.7% of the un­em­ployed.

This means that al­most every other job­less per­son in the world is be­tween the ages of 15 and 24. The ex­clu­sion from the eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and so­cial life of their coun­tries breeds dis­il­lu­sion­ment, hope­less­ness, and up­heaval. Re­search has found links be­tween youth un­em­ploy­ment and so­cial ex­clu­sion, and sug­gests that this may lead to po­lit­i­cal and so­cial in­sta­bil­ity, and pos­si­bly to vi­o­lence.

Ac­tion is re­quired to achieve eco­nomic pros­per­ity for, and the in­clu­sion of, the youth. Al­though ev­i­dence shows that gov­ern­ments and cities are mak­ing ef­forts to tackle youth poverty and their lack of en­gage­ment in gov­er­nance, re­sources to un­der­take such in­ter­ven­tions are very lim­ited. UN-Habi­tat rec­og­nizes the po­ten­tial of the youth as a ma­jor force for cre­at­ing a bet­ter ur­ban fu­ture.

Some of the great­est chal­lenges cities face to­day is gen­er­at­ing data on the chal­lenges that the youth en­counter, in­clud­ing ac­cess to ba­sic ser­vices such as ed­u­ca­tion; san­i­ta­tion and hous­ing; un­der­em­ploy­ment and un­em­ploy­ment; and ex­clu­sion from de­ci­sion-mak­ing. With­out this data, city of­fi­cials are un­able to de­velop strate­gies that at­tend to this ex­clu­sion. For ex­am­ple, with­out lo­cal labour mar­ket in­for­ma­tion, it is dif­fi­cult to plan ef­fec­tive em­ploy­ment train­ing in­ter­ven­tions that re­duce un­em­ploy­ment. On the ba­sis of ex­pe­ri­ence gained through its Ur­ban Youth Re­search Net­work (a global net­work of ur­ban youth ex­perts), UN-Habi­tat pro­vides a range of re­search and strate­gic plan­ning ser­vices, in­clud­ing:

• na­tional or city-level em­pir­i­cal re­search on the chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties of ur­ban youth pop­u­la­tions;
• na­tional or city-level work­shops to dis­cuss the re­sults of the re­search on ur­ban youth; and
• par­tic­i­pa­tory for­mu­la­tion of a na­tional or city ur­ban youth strat­egy, which en­com­pases skills de­vel­op­ment, job cre­ation, sports, and recre­ation.

UN-Habi­tat is one of the pre­em­i­nent in­ter­na­tional agen­cies work­ing on ur­ban youth pol­icy, re­search, and pro­gram­ming. Through its Ur­ban Youth Re­search Net­work (a net­work of 15 key re­search agen­cies fo­cus­ing on ur­ban youth, such as the Chil­dren, Youth and En­vi­ron­ment Cen­tre and the In­ter­na­tional In­sti­tute for Child Rights and De­vel­op­ment), UN-Habi­tat seeks to en­hance na­tional and city level de­ci­sion-mak­ers’ un­der­stand­ing of the chal­lenges fac­ing ur­ban youth, as well as of the op­por­tu­ni­ties for deal­ing with those chal­lenges.

One of UN-Habi­tat’s flag­ship re­ports, the State of Ur­ban Youth, is launched bian­nu­ally as part of the State of the World Cities re­port. The World Ur­ban Fo­rum Di­a­logue se­ries on Ur­ban Youth is a bian­nual pub­li­ca­tion launched at the World Ur­ban Fo­rum, which high­lights cut­ting edge re­search on ur­ban youth is­sues. UN-Habi­tat’s city part­ners use the Se­ries to de­velop pro­grammes that en­gage youth and help them to be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens. UN-Habi­tat as­sists cities in their poli­cies and pro­gram­ming by pro­vid­ing re­search ser­vices. It uti­lizes its net­works and ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in this field to pro­duce high-qual­ity prod­ucts tai­lored to the needs of cities.

Though youth are vi­tal to the pros­per­ity of cities in the de­vel­op­ing world, they still face many bar­ri­ers — most no­tably un­der­em­ploy­ment and un­em­ploy­ment, and a lack of ac­cess to ba­sic ser­vices such as health­care and ed­u­ca­tion — which pre­vent them from reach­ing their po­ten­tial. UN-Habi­tat has worked with cities glob­ally to over­come these bar­ri­ers through the de­vel­op­ment of pro­grammes that achieve three key ob­jec­tives:

• im­prove youths’ liveli­hoods by in­creas­ing their em­ploy­a­bil­ity;
• de­crease their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties; and
• in­te­grate them fully into the eco­nomic and so­cial life of the city.

These pro­grammes as­sist youth to be­come lead­ers in their com­mu­ni­ties and to lead healthy and pro­duc­tive lives. Over the past nine years, UN-Habi­tat has es­tab­lished, to­gether with its part­ners, “One-stop Cen­tres” in five African cities with plans to ex­pand to Asia and Latin Amer­ica. Each “One-stop Cen­tre” is unique in the pro­grammes it de­liv­ers, re­spond­ing to the needs of the lo­cal youth pop­u­la­tion. Its core pro­grammes are sports and recre­ation, job skills and en­tre­pre­neur­ship train­ing, health ser­vices such as HIV/​AIDs test­ing and coun­selling, and sup­port for youth-led gov­er­nance and plan­ning. The “One-stops” are built on part­ner­ships be­tween UN-Habi­tat and the lo­cal gov­ern­ment, civil so­ci­ety, youth, and the pri­vate sec­tor to de­velop pro­grammes which re­spond to the needs of the youth.[show_a­vatar email=17 user_link=last_­post show_­name=true avatar_­size=66]