BWANEWS INBRIEF

BWANEWS INBRIEF

United Nations BWA Youth at the United Nations

The Baptist World Alliance (BWA), recognizing that youth are integral to the stability of nations, is joining forces with the global community to help address problems faced by youth. Utilizing existing channels and its NGO status within the United Nations community, the BWA hopes to bring youth issues to the forefront.

Current statistics make such a move compelling. It

is estimated that, of the world

population, more than one person in fi ve are between the ages of 10 and 19 years old,

totaling approximately 1.2 billion

youth. The number increases to 1.8 billion when those aged 20-24 are added. The global median age is estimated at 28.4, with some 40 countries such as Nigeria, Guatemala

and Afghanistan

having a median age of less than 20 years old. Uganda is the lowest at 15 years old. Much of the world’s violence affects

youth. Approximately 250,000 homicides occur among youth 10-29 years of age each year, 41 percent of the total number of homicides globally. “For every young person killed by violence, 20-40 more sustain injuries

that require hospital

treatment,” a World Health Organization (WHO) report states. Such violence, the WHO claims, “contribute[s] greatly to the global burden of premature death, injury and disability, but also [has] a serious, often lifelong, impact on a person’s psychological and social functioning.” Several

factors precipitate youth

violence: low levels of social cohesion within a community; an absence of nonvi- olent alternatives for resolving confl icts; high income inequality; rapid social and

demographic changes; urbanization; and the quality of a country’s governance such as law enforcement and the provision of educational opportunities, etc. All these are in addition to parental failure through poor supervision and harsh, lax or incon- sistent parental disciplinary practices. While access to education for youth has improved over the past several decades, youth unemployment remains a concern. According to the UN, youth employment and income have deteriorated in Latin America over the past 20 or so years. In Sub-Saharan Africa, “the percentage of youth living in poverty is extremely high.” In the Middle East and North Africa, “unemployment is primarily a youth issue rather than a generalized population issue,” the UN noted. “Young people represent only about one third of the total working age population while they account for almost half of all unemployed people in the region.” The same UN report said that “in Central and Eastern Europe, 33.6 percent of youth are not in school and not employed.” BWA programs for youth

have traditionally been organized by the BWA Youth Department and regional youth bodies. These remain integral to BWA youth

Raphael Almeida and Melissa Gomes who represented the BWA at the 10th Annual

Youth Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York City from January 18-20

ministry as a whole. However, the BWA will continue to explore additional op- portunities through the global community to address youth-related issues. As a result of this commitment, the

BWA sent two youth representatives to the 10th

Annual Youth Assembly at the

UN headquarters in New York City from January 18-20. The assembly focused on ways to use social media and mobile technology

to help achieve eradicating extreme a global the eight

Millennium Development Goals which include

poverty,

reducing child mortality rates, fi ghting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing

partnership development.

Melissa Gomes and Raphael Almeida represented the BWA at the youth assembly. “It was amazing to see so many young people who are enthusiastic and concerned with issues facing humanity gathered in one place,” Gomes reported. “Most presentations motivated us to

action,” said Almeida. “Specifi cally as an organization that gathers churches and individuals, there are innumerable ways the Baptist World Alliance can be involved.”

expects to make its mark as a global organization,

to the theological, ethical, social and international

and working to help overcome these obstacles.

While only an initial step, the BWA sensitizing young people issues that affect them,

for