2023 International Youth Day
The 12th of August is International Youth Day, which was created by the United Nations General Assembly as an opportunity to give young people voices and provide them with meaningful participation in political and social life.
The 2023 International Youth Day theme is “Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World,” to streamline the green transition and the need to develop green skills. The theme is in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in response to the climate change crisis.
Green skills, consisting of “knowledge, values and attitudes needed to develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society”, encompass technical knowledge and skills to effectively use technology to promote environmentally sustainable decisions. Because youth will endure severe climate events longer, improving green skills in youth is more important than ever. To commemorate the International Youth Day 2023, UN DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs) is organizing a global webinar to exchange ideas about green skills for youth.
IIMA Human Rights Office, in collaboration with VIDES International, fully support this initiative to promote youth engagement in addressing environmental challenges and advance the youth agenda and the UN 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Accordingly, IIMA and VIDES International are currently implementing the Youth to Reshape the World Project with youth activists from European countries. As part of this project, an Informational Session was held on the 8 of June 2023 to discuss how to support youth in their environmental projects and more specifically on how to promote meaningful youth participation in climate change and global environmental decision-making processes in their particular countries. This project is also particularly timing since, in accordance with its latest resolution on youth and human rights, the UN Human Rights Council will hold on September 26 a Panel discussion on this topic at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
More information on the HRC resolution on youth and human rights can be found here.