Programme

Adolescents and youth

Youth become agents for positive change in their communities

teenage girls studying
UNICEF Kyrgyzstan
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The challenge

Kyrgyzstan’s population is very young. More than a third of its almost 7 million people are aged between 14 and 35. This young population offers great potential for development, but only if youth are fully engaged in decision making.

However, research suggests that youth in Kyrgyzstan do not feel engaged in decision-making processes. In the past several years Kyrgyzstan’s Youth Participation Index ranking has decreased, from 0.53 in 2017 to 0.41 in 2022. Around 20 per cent of youth are not in education, employment or training (NEET), making them “afraid of the future or uncertain about tomorrow."

This contributes to escalating distrust in different social institutions, as well as polarization along characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status.

a teenage boy is next to an old car
UNICEF Kyrgyzstan

Gender has a significant impact on a young person’s access to education and other opportunities. These gender disparities – compounded by issues such as gender-based violence and child marriage – further restrict girls’ active engagement in society. The NEET rate among young women is 29.4 per cent, compared with 12 per cent for young men.

The mismatch between the school curriculum and the skills needed in the labour market poses another challenge to young people: only 40.1 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 years are economically active, and the youth unemployment rate is 14.2 per cent.

The emerging climate change agenda – as well as the problem of air pollution – calls for proactive youth advocacy and action for sustainability. 

The solution

UNICEF is leading several initiatives in partnership with the government and civil society organizations to help youth strengthen their life skills and develop civic competencies. The goal is to empower young people to be more active, voice their concerns on issues that matter to them, and contribute positively to their communities.  

The Youth- and Child-Friendly Local Governance programme is one such initiative. The programme encourages local governments to include young people in the planning and decision-making process. This helps to empower youth, while letting the local governments focus more on improving the well-being of children and young people. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport, and Youth Policy, as well as 32 mayors’ offices across Kyrgyzstan.

UPSHIFT is another initiative. This approach is intended to empower young people, especially NEET young people, to address community issues. Participants learn to develop and implement solutions through a four-stage process: observation and understanding; design; development and testing; and implementation. Within the current peacebuilding project, 520 young people have produced 42 peacebuilding solutions, with 27 funded by peacebuilding projects and the rest by local governments.

STEM4Girls is a project to empower adolescent girls in Kyrgyzstan through promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and training in leadership skills. It targets 15–17-year-olds, especially in rural and disadvantaged areas. More than 300 adolescent girls have received training on STEM, gender equality, communication, online safety and other issues, and have passed on their knowledge to their peers across the country. STEM4Girls participants have already reached over 10,000 girls with sessions on different topics.

unicef volunteers are working with school children
UNICEF Kyrgyzstan

UNICEF Volunteers. In 2018, following UNICEF's Global Volunteer Initiative, UNICEF Kyrgyzstan launched a pilot volunteers programme to engage university students in the Safe Schools programme. From 2022 to 2024, UNICEF trained more than 800 volunteers on how to react in emergency situations. These young activists conducted emergency drills in 900 schools, training close to half-a-million students in safety skills. Most importantly, this programme has empowered young volunteers to become active in their communities and embark on many other new endeavours.

Another way to empower young people is to make their voices heard. This is why UNICEF supports U-Report, a platform where 34 million young individuals in 99 countries share their views on key community issues and promote sustainable development. Kyrgyzstan joined this network in 2021, empowering youth to articulate their concerns and bring about positive change in partnership with government agencies. Through U-Report, young people in Kyrgyzstan can connect with a worldwide peer network, sharing their perspectives and influencing change on issues significant to them.

The U-Report platform boasted 13,765 young subscribers in Kyrgyzstan in 2024.

At the policy level, UNICEF works with the government, including the Ministry of Natural Resources, which signed a declaration in 2023 to include youth in climate policies. Institutionally, UNICEF supports teachers and schools in environmental education. On an individual level, UNICEF equips young people with ‘green skills’ so that they can effectively contribute to countering climate change, organizes hackathons for youth-led environmental projects, and holds climate-focused summer camps. These initiatives help young people develop transferable skills, as well as to create local climate solutions and share them on social media.

Resources

These resources represent just a small selection of materials on adolescents and youth produced by UNICEF and its partners in Kyrgyzstan. The list is regularly updated to include the latest information.

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