Who is Young ?

Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as a person under the age of 18.

 

The United Nations defines “Youth” as those between the ages of 15 and 24, but there are national and sociological variations.

 

Young people do not form a homogenous group; there are numerous subgroups facing discrimination based on ethnicity, family background, age or geographical location.

Misconception :

Youth are a homogenous group and strategies to tackle youth labour market challenges can be uniformly applied within and across countries. (ILO, 2006)

Perhaps this is the most blatant misconception. A young person born in Burundi cannot be compared to a young person in, say, China in terms of the opportunities and constraints placed before them.

Even within countries, there are numerous subgroups of youth that face discrimination based on their ethnicity, age, family background or geographic location.

Numerous illustrations in this report identify youth who face specific challenges in the search for decent work – young migrants, young women, youth in rural areas, young refugees.

Youth are not a homogenous group which is why targeted interventions aimed at overcoming the specific disadvantages that some youth face in entering and remaining in the labour market will be warranted.

What is important to remember is that despite the individual characteristics that make up each young person, where youth are equal to one another is in their right to strive for and obtain full and productive employment.

 

Youth is the transition phase between childhood and adulthood, a critical stage in life. If we link this phase to the process of acquiring a means of subsistence then for street children this phase can last as many as 10 years.

For the purposes of this report “Youth” is defined as 15-24yrs, as is commonly accepted (See UN, 1992). Nevertheless there are variations in the way that different national statistical programs define and measure youth.

Definitions of “youth” are based in part on the end use of the measurement. If one aims to measure, for example, the age span at which one is expected to enter the labour market then the statistical definition of 15 to 24 years may no longer be valid, given that today more and more young people postpone their entry into labour markets to well beyond the age of 25.

Alternatively, if one were to aim for the broader characteristic-based classification of youth (as opposed to a simple age-based definition), then a more sociological viewpoint on what constitutes “youth” is needed. For example, one might wish to define “youth” as the transition stage from childhood to adulthood, in which case the age at which this transition begins will vary greatly between societies and indeed within the same society.

When viewed as a critical stage in the lifecycle the relevant age could be as low as 10 years of age ( for street kids, for example) to high as mid to late 30s. The wider age span suggests that the process of obtaining a sustaining livelihood can take a long time, particularly in poor societies.

Source : Curtain, 2002 and 2004

 

There are at present 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 in the world. 89% of young people in the world live in developing economies. (Source UN statistics 2010) In 2025 in developing countries 42% of the population will be under 25. The growth of the young workforce will continue to be concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia and the Pacific, and in the Middle East and North Africa; regions where the weakness of economic activity already creates high youth unemployment. Between 1995 and 2005 these regions saw the number of young people arriving on the labour market rise by 24 million (sub-Saharan Africa), 11 million (SE Asia and the Pacific), and 865,000 (Middle East and North Africa). Over the same period the size of the young workforce fell in all other regions.