Meetings of Stakeholders active in the field of Youth
The Meetings of Stakeholders in the field of youth is an annual event aiming at increasing coordination and fostering cooperation among youth-related entities at international level.
Having had in the past different regional focuses, since 2020 this initiative increased its scope and relevance: from being an informal occasion to share experiences and ongoing projects at regional level, the meeting is now a recurrent major event to advance the global youth agenda and develop a global youth partnership for development, peace and global citizenship.
The Meetings of Stakeholders in the field of youth ensure a comfortable and structured space for dialogue to understand the state-of-art of the youth sector, to exchange information and lessons learned, to address mutual challenges and to identify possible synergies at interregional level.
The North-South Centre act as facilitator of the meetings encouraging networking, and relationship building, looking for a common ground in terms of priorities and messages to be mainstreamed at inter-regional level to preserve the centrality of youth policies and of the role of young people.
Frequent and stable moments of dialogue and interaction are necessary to strengthen youth cooperation and a platform like the annual meetings of the NSC - where inputs and initiatives are shared, commented and combined in an informal, yet technical manner - contribute to the achievement of the SDGs and build a more effective multilevel global governance.
In the recent editions, the meetings succeeded in gathering the main international players of the youth sector both from the inter-governmental level (Office of the Special Envoy on Youth of the African Union, League of Arab States, United Nations Alliance of Civilisations…) and from the youth-led level (United Network of Young Peacebuilders, Network of International Youth Organisations in Africa, Youth Forum of the Portuguese Speaking Countries Community...)
MEETING 2021
• The Challenges faced by youth globally
The constrained space for civil society-led initiatives remains a major concern for all. Especially young people from vulnerable communities continue to face structural obstacles to participation and to be underrepresented in youth-focused policy initiatives.
• The Challenges faced by organisations working with youth
On one side, international organisations continue to lack the tools and mindset to truly engage young people. On the other side, youth-led networks continue to be underfunded and overwhelmed by work. Such a context, within pandemic period, creates difficulties in establishing new partnerships.
• The Opportunities for collaborative action
It remains in place a general context where international youth-related entities focus most of their efforts in pursuing their own agendas and setting up their own activities independently, giving limited consideration to the fact that cooperation can be the way to reach their objectives in a more sustainable and structured way.
MEETING 2020
The meeting was held in May 2020 to meet the need felt by many organsiations to have a joint moment to reflect and analyse the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, which is challenging traditional spaces for dialogue.
The main aims were to draw a picture of the state-of-art of the current situation at inter-regional level and to share the challenges of the youth sector amidst the pandemic. In some parts of the globe, in fact, the COVID-19 pandemic brought additional concerns related to the shrinking space for civil society.
The sharing of the ways in which major players in the youth sector are adjusting their programmes and initiatives according to the current unexpected circumstances, helped to assess the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on entities working with young people.
The meeting allowed an analysis of the new on-line dimension of youth programmes, the identification of critical points in terms of outreach and advocacy spaces for young people and the drafting recommendations to enhance inter-regional cooperation.
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