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Alexandria Declaration
 We
the participants in the first Youth
Employment Summit (YES 2002),
meeting at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in Alexandria Egypt,
hereby reaffirm our profound commitment to a decade-long global
campaign for the creation of hundreds of millions of additional
opportunities for sustainable livelihoods for youth all over the
world. A paradigm shift on Employment is needed. Quality is as
important as the quantity of jobs created. The poor, living on
less than a dollar a day, cannot be locked into a life of deprivation.
We must move from unskilled to skilled occupations, from low paying
to high paying jobs, from subsidized public employment to sustainable
productive livelihoods.
We recognize
that these goals can only be met if all actors agree to address
a number of important issues: peace, fair trade, market
access, technology transfer, capital flows and poverty eradication.
This will require redoubled efforts from the entire international
community, and donors must meet their commitments and give special
attention to projects and programs for youth employment. Convergence
and greater synergies between different initiatives and programs
dealing with youth employment will benefit youth.
While national
governments have a special responsibility for according overriding
priority to youth employment and for creating
the necessary
policy framework, we recognize that all segments of society
must collaborate to empower youth to become the artisans of their
own future.
To that end,
we engage ourselves to support vigorous action in each of the
following areas:
Employability:
To ensure access for all youth to appropriate education
and training followed by adequate support during the transition
to work, regardless of their location or background. We cannot
confront the challenges of tomorrow with yesterday's skills.
Educational institutions must show unprecedented imagination
and vision, using new tools for new times. They must impart
marketable skills, promote self-esteem and shape a worldview
that embraces the new, opens up to the other, and rises to
the challenge of the untried.
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Employment Creation:
To adopt those policies that will encourage job-led economic
growth, reduce the bias towards capital, and foster the institutional
structures that can provide the advantages of scale at both
the production and marketing phases of micro-enterprises
supported by micro-credit. The corporate sector has a major
responsibility in supporting micro-enterprises and self-employed
youth through mechanisms of franchising, outsourcing and
buy-back arrangements.
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Equity:
To provide equal opportunities for all to realize their
full potential. Education, health and nutrition are fundamental
rights for all. Special attention must be given to the needs
of the disabled, the rural, and the marginalized groups in
society, and above all, to young women, whether in education
or when entering the labor force for the first time, and
who in many parts of the world still suffer from discriminatory
barriers. No society has truly advanced by depriving itself
of the talents and abilities of half of its population.
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Entrepreneurship:
To engender the special creativity of youthful entrepreneurs,
who see social and economic opportunities where others only
see problems. Entrepreneurs, whether they are working in
the villages or in the capital markets, are the visionaries
who generate livelihoods for themselves and for others. We
need to encourage, nurture and support their quest for the
new and the untried.
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Environmental Sustainability:
To seek sustainable employment opportunities based on attention
to water, land, energy, the atmosphere, biodiversity and
eco-system management. It would be shortsighted to destroy
our environment in the quest for transient employment opportunities.
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Empowerment:
To harness the uncommon opportunities of the ICT revolution
to include the excluded and reach the unreached in terms
of knowledge and skill empowerment. The whole constellation
of institutional arrangements from credit to resource-use,
from marketing to connectivity and content, must be structured
in a way that empower youth in their quest for sustainable
livelihoods.
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We recognize
that solutions to problems must be homegrown and responsive to
the particular socio-cultural and
economic context.
But we can
all learn from the experiences of others, and derive
strength from our common purpose. Thus national
campaigns through
the YES Country
Networks must be embedded into a global campaign
that will help share knowledge and experience.
The Global
Knowledge
Resource of the campaign should help make the best
practices of the
few
into
the common practices of the many.
The cost of
inaction on the issues of youth employment are too dreadful to
contemplate.
We must act now
to start the
process of creating this better future. We shall
act now and in the
future.
The goals
are inspiring, but the tasks are enormous. To those who ask,
can it be done? We say with youth
organizations and networks
spearheading this global campaign...YES!
It can be done.
It must be done.
It will be done!
For questions or comments, contact mosaic@edc.org.
Copyright 2000-2003
Education Development Center, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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