Global Policy Forum

By Thalif Deen

The international community is being blamed for neglecting the social and economic needs of the largest generation of adolescents in history -- about 1.2 billion out of a world population of 6.0 billion -- who will soon enter adulthood.

"Investing in young people will yield generous returns, but their needs continue to be shortchanged," the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) said Wednesday. Half of the world's adolescents, between the ages of 10 and 19, are poor, with one in four living in extreme poverty on less than a dollar a day, the New York-based U.N. agency said.

In its annual 84-page report on the State of World Population, 2003 released here, UNFPA said that neglect and under-funding of programmes enabling young people to avoid unwanted pregnancy, unsafe childbirth and sexually transmitted infections are undermining development and spreading HIV/AIDS. "Investment to correct this will be repaid many times over," UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid told reporters. "Governments need to do more in order to meet their international development goals and commitments to young people," she added.

The study points out that neglect and underfunding of adolescents' sexual and reproductive health needs are actually perpetuating poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the international community pledged to meet one third of the costs of a package of population and reproductive health services in developing countries -- 17 billion dollars a year in 2000, 18.5 billion in 2005, 20.5 billion in 2010 and 21.7 billion in 2015.

"But amounts contributed by the international community are declining," says the study. In the year 2001, total expenditure for population programmes worldwide was about 9.6 billion dollars. The international assistance portion of that was 2.5 billion dollars -- about one quarter of the total. "The costs of failing to support young people will have serious consequences at both the individual and societal levels," the report warns.

Werner Fornos, president of the Washington-based Population Institute, told IPS that if world governments continue to fail to live up to their responsibilities, "the consequences will be dire, if not deadly". Fornos, a recipient of the 2003 U.N. Population Award, said that industrial countries, which pledged to provide one third of the 17 billion dollars pledged at ICPD in Cairo, have failed to meet their international obligations. "The United States, with the greatest wherewithal to lead the way, has made giant strides backward," he said.

At the time of the Cairo conference, the United States was spending about 585 million dollars on population assistance. This has not only dropped to 425 million dollars, he said, but Washington is now funding dubious programmes to promote abstinence at the expense of providing condoms, which protect against both unwanted pregnancy and venereal diseases, including HIV/AIDS. "For the investment of pennies today in the appropriate interventions, we could save billions of dollars that will have to be spent tomorrow on the inevitable social disintegration resulting from hordes of disillusioned young people -- homeless, powerless, uneducated, unemployed and unemployable -- seeking refuge in the easily accessible northern hemisphere," he added. Fornos also pointed out that by choosing to pour billions of dollars into, at best, "questionable military ventures that bring death and disability, we squander the opportunity to invest these same resources in the education and the health of future generations."

Melissa May of the Population Council underlined the importance of adolescence, which marks the developmental transition from childhood to adulthood -- "a time when many important social, economic, biological, and demographic events set the stage for adult life." - "The nature and quality of young people's future lives, as well as a country's future social and economic development, depend largely on how well adolescents navigate this transition," she added.

The Population Council, she said, has done extensive research in this area in at least eight countries: Bangladesh, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa and Vietnam. Obaid said that this year's UNFPA report is a "wake-up call" to listen to young people and acknowledge their needs. "It's a wake-up call to increase funding and expand information and services to young people. It is a wake-up call to support them so that they can lead healthy, productive and dignified lives," she added.

She specifically singled out AIDS as a disease of young people, fuelled by poverty, gender inequality and a severe lack of information and services. Today, half of all new HIV infections occur among youth aged 15 to 24. An estimated 6,000 youth a day become infected with HIV/AIDS -- one every 14 seconds, she added. "There is a critical need for more education and increased access to youth-friendly reproductive health services," Obaid said.

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