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Adolescents hold 'key to 21st century'

In a keynote address to a Conference here co-sponsored by the Johann Jacobs Foundation of Switzerland and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ms. Bellamy said that assuring young people’s right to health and development “is central to preventing not only a range of immediate threats like HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and violence, but also to combating a host of later problems that can threaten not only their lives, but their children’s.”

“UNICEF and our many partners throughout civil society and the UN System have been focusing on adolescents since the early 1990s for one major reason,” Ms. Bellamy said: “Because that period in a child’s life is a unique window of opportunity to break a range of vicious cycles – cycles that perpetuate structural problems that undermine child rights, and that are passed down from one generation to the next, like poverty, gender discrimination, violence, and poor health and nutrition.”

She said both the Jacobs Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation “deserve immense credit for their ongoing efforts to throw a spotlight on the overarching importance of youth – especially in emphasizing the need for development, beyond simply addressing the problems that arise for adolescents when development is inadequate.”

The Conference was opened on Thursday by Klaus J. Jacobs, Chairman of the Johann Jacobs Foundation. The dinner session was being hosted by Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

In her address, Ms. Bellamy cited UN statistics that show that 70 per cent of all premature deaths among adults are the result of behaviours that began during adolescence, such as the contraction of HIV or the use of tobacco.

“UNICEF has long been an advocate for the rights of adolescents in need of special protection – child soldiers, institutionalised children, children caught up in sexual trafficking and exploitation, and all those we number among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged,” Ms. Bellamy said. “However, in the last seven years, galvanized especially by the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we have been moving to redouble our efforts to mobilise and support programmes to address adolescents’ rights to development and to participation.”

She said the agency’s experience in the field has shown “the remarkable extent to which participating adolescents are a positive force for needed social change.”

“The examples,” she said, “are everywhere, from the Children’s Movement for Peace in Colombia to young people’s contributions to ending apartheid in South Africa – and the courageous boys and girls in places like Rwanda who have taken the reins of family responsibility and are raising their younger siblings amid war, AIDS and other disasters that have deprived them of parents.

“Yet societies tend not to count these contributions, and social policies make no provisions to support the children who do this,” Ms. Bellamy said.

The two-day conference on Thursday and Friday, entitled Youth: Asset or Burden, is a follow-up to a major meeting in Germany in October, when researchers and practitioners in adolescent issues gathered to consider the situation of young people, particularly the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and to discuss specific interventions to counter the effects of poverty.

The 25 -26 February gathering, which involves a representative group from the October conference, is aimed at identifying specific issues for international action. It is being held at the Carnegie Corporation, 437 Madison Avenue, and at the Palace Hotel.

The sessions, chaired by Prof. Marta Tienda, director of Princeton University’s Office of Population Research, include experts from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, Utrecht University’s European Research Center on Migration and Ethnic Relations; the University of Chicago’s Department of Anthropology; the University of London’s Programme on International Rights of the Child; Classroom, Inc.; the Richmond Project; and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

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