Background  

The vision of the Secretary-General

The YEN was created under the impetus of the Millennium Declaration, where the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government ever met at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 and resolved to " develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work."

In preparation for the Millennium Summit the Secretary-General issued a report entitled "We the Peoples: the Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century." Here the Secretary-General first proposed his Youth Employment Network:

Together with the heads of the World Bank and the International Labour Organization, I am convening a High-Level Policy Network on youth employment drawing on the most creative leaders in private industry, civil society and economic policy to explore imaginative approaches to this difficult challenge. I will ask this policy network to propose a set of recommendations that I can convey to world leaders within a year.

Following the Summit, youth employment was subsequently integrated in the Millennium Development Goals, becoming an important goal in its own right and a key contribution to meeting other Millennium Goals, including those relating to poverty reduction.

Following this politcal process the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan committed to setting up a personal initiative: the Secretary General’s Youth Employment Network (YEN) to act as vehicle to address the global challenge of youth employment. He invited Juan Somavia , Director-General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and James Wolfensohn, former President of  the World Bank to join him in this new inter-agency partnership. These core partners all bring unique skills to the table; the UN brings its political mandate to mobilise governments around this issue, the World Bank brings its macro-economic policies since a healthy economy creates the conditions for youth employment, and the ILO brings technical expertise on employment and the world of work.

The heads of these three Core Partner institutions then invited 12 leaders and policy experts in the field of youth employment from throughout the world to form a High Level Panel for the YEN.

This panel worked closely with the Joint Secretariat constituted by the ILO, the UN and the World Bank, to prepare a set of policy recommendations on youth employment policy, which were discussed at the 1st High-Level Panel meeting held at ILO headquarters in Geneva on 16-17 July 2001. 

These policy recommendations were transmitted by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly in September 2001. These recommendations focussed on four global priority policy areas or the four "E's": Employability, Equal opportunities, Entrepreneurship, and Employment creation.

In 2002 The High Level Panel set up four Working Groups, to refine each of these policy areas. The four "roadmaps" developed by the Working Groups where presented as a consolidated document at the 2nd High-Level Panel meeting held at ILO headquarters in Geneva, 30 June - 1 July 2003.

In 2004, a YEN Youth Consultative Group (YCG) was launched, comprising representatives of large international and regional youth organizations. The YCG works to represent the concerns of young people on the functioning and strategic priorities of the YEN whilst supporting youth participation in the development, implementation and review of youth employment polcies at the country levlel.

A strengthened mandate

The work of the YEN has been strengthened by a series of UN General Assembly Resolutions, the December 2002 Resolution on promoting youth employment (A/RES/57/165) and Resolution A/RES/58/133, of January 2004, concerning policies and programmers involving youth and the February 2006 Commission for Social Development resolution on Youth Employment (E/CN.5/2006/L.3)

These resolutions encourage countries to prepare National Action Plans (NAPs) on youth employment with assistance of the ILO, the UN and the World Bank as well as other specialized agencies - and with the participation of young people.

Nineteen countries have stepped forward to volunteer as Lead Countries for the YEN to share experiences, lead the way in formulating action plans on youth employment, while committing to the issue at highest political level: Azerbaijan, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, Georgia, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Jamaica, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Syria, Turkey, Uganda and United Kingdom. Many more countries have expressed interest in following suit.

A December 2004 Note verbale (Fr, Sp) outlines the submission of these national action plans (or progress reports toward their development) to the United Nations.

Thirty-nine countries submitted their plans on youth employment or progress reports, whuch were incorporated into the Secretary-General's Report August 2005 A Global Analysis and Evaluation of National Action Plans on youth employment (A/60/133, July 2005)

Recent developments

Support from the United Nations system, March 2003

The YEN has been bolstered further by a decision of High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) in March 2003 to recognise that the YEN provided the United Nations system with an opportunity to influence the international development agenda and policy debate with a positive message in support of the aspirations of the world's young people.

2nd High-Level Panel Meeting, June 30 - July 1, 2003

Two years after the 1st High Level Panel Meeting this meeting marked the launch of a second, more operational phase of the Youth Employment Network with the Panel outlining a five step process to be taken by the Youth Employment Network to promote youth employment policies in the YEN 10 Lead Countries and beyond.

First National Action Plan launched, August 2004

In Indonesia, under the direction of the Indonesia YEN (I-YEN) steering committee a National Youth Employment Action Plan for Indonesia (I-YEAP) was drafted. This Plan was launched by the Indonesian Vice President, H.E. Hamzah Hazin on International Youth Day , August 11, 2004,and moved into the implementation phase in 2005-2006.

3rd High-Level Panel Meeting, 27-28 September 2004

This meeting, hosted by the World Bank, saw a review of activities in the Lead Countries and a strong commitment by the Panel, the Core Partners and youth to mobilize the governments in the lead countries to prepare National Action Plans in time for the five-year review of the MDGs in 2005. The meeting also saw the launch of a YEN Youth Consultative Group comprising of representatives of large international and regional youth organisations.

4th High-Level Panel Meeting, 19-20 May 2005

The All-China Youth Federation hosted this 4th meeting of the YENs High-Level Panel in Beijing.

The meeting served as an opportunity for the High-Level Panel to appraise its own role and to determine its own future.In a letter to Kofi Annan outlining the outcomes of the meeting the Panel recognized that its mandate to deliver a strategy had been fulfilled and was now well advanced into the implementation stage.

The Panellists set out a series of recommendations on the future role and directions of the Youth Employment Network, as well as on the governance structure required to put these new strategic directions into effect.