Youth20 "gives the youth the opportunity to contribute and to actually be part of deciding on policies to change the world," said one delegate attending the Y20 Turkey Summit in Istanbul.
"The whole idea is to provide the G20 leaders a perspective from the stakeholders, who are youths (in this case)," said 24-year-old Karina Blanco Ochoa from Mexico.
She was only one among a diverse group of keen young leaders from across G20 countries participating in the Y20 Turkey Summit being held in Istanbul between Aug. 16 and 21.
Each country is represented by four or five people, making a total of around 100 delegates at the summit.
"It is a unique opportunity for young people to a talk in a global summit, because in other global summits like the UN, you do not have any youths talking about what our concerns are and what we could do to make it better," says Laure Amme Parpaleix, 24, from France.
She thinks that unemployment is a major issue in lots of countries, including France – an issue also handled by Turkey`s G20 Sherpa Ambassador Ayse Sinirlioglu.
"Unemployment and inequality have been rising across the world," she said. "If we cannot include the young population into the labor force, into the social and political dimensions of our society, we cannot be inclusive."
Stressing that the increasing youth unemployment is unsustainable, Sinirlioglu said:
"If we cannot find solution to this, then we will lose our feature generations for a long period of time, and this will be a loss for our economies, for our social and political systems."
The summit also pointed out that the group of young people which is at most risk in the labor market is the low skilled, those neither in employment nor in education and training, or those working in the informal economy.
Sinirlioglu said 150 million young people across G20 countries are in that group, in addition to more than 100 million young people who are working in informal jobs.
"Reducing the share of young people in these groups is a responsibility for all of us," she said.
Turkey, which took over the G20 presidency on Dec. 1, 2014, will host the tenth annual meeting of the G20 heads of government on Nov. 15-16 in the southwestern city of Antalya. - İstanbul
More about:
