After a difficult decision @ Slovak Youth Council

The Slovak Youth Delegate 2011 is: Monika Marekova

“Today a new youth delegate for Slovakia will be selected - just watching 6 motivated young people debating. It was a great year, a life changing experience!” - My impressions on May, 18.

All six participants in the final round were great, but Monika was the best. You may be wondering about her: Monika is a 23 years old law student, she is into Human Rights and promoting democracy. To find out more, read her intro (in English) or visit her website (in Slovak).

Me and Monika? We had a transfer of knowledge meeting on 3 June and a visit to the UN Office in Vienna the following week. Next stop: A seminar "It's up to YOUth" focusing on youth participation.

Congratulations and good luck, Monika!













Girls together: Monika, yd2011 on the left

About the Youth Delegate Programe in the UN, Vienna

On 1 March 2011, I presented the YD Program at the ACUNS Conference in the UN Office in Vienna, in session on “How to communicate UN concepts and issues to the next generation?” Here is my speech.

My name is Dana Vyzinkarova, I am a Youth Delegate to the UN from Slovakia and a student at the Diplomatic Academy here in Vienna at the same time. When I first saw the question, I thought of 2 wonderful ways about how to make the UN more familiar to young people: The Model UN and the YD Program. I am here to present the Program of the YD to the UN.

We can all agree that it is a challenge to make the young people interested in the work of the UN. Many consider the UN an institution too far away from their everyday lives and maybe too complicated.
At first, I will explain the idea of the YD Program, then give you some examples from various countries and in the end I will summarize the tools we use to pass the UN issues to young people.

The idea of the YD Program is two way: to bring the UN to young people and the other way around, to bring the young people to the UN. After all, half of the world's population is younger than 25 and it is a basic idea of youth participation to give them some say about the youth policies.

Since 1981 the United Nations recommend Member States to include Youth Delegates in their national delegations in order to ensure direct youth participation. Therefore some countries send a YD to the UN GA (concretely to the 3rd committee which deals with youth related issues) each year, and some do the same with sending to some ECOSOC meetings, for instance the Commission for Social Development (CSD) and the Commission on Status of Women (CSW).

What does one YD do – How does he/she awake the interest in the UN?
Before I speak shortly about my experience in Slovakia, I prepared examples to demonstrate this from all over the globe.

In 2009, the Australian YD visited all states of Australia, meeting young people with all different backgrounds (with a specific focus on young people with fewer opportunities) and discussed their life circumstances and concerns; on each visit he asked the young people to write a letter to the prime minister, Kevin Rudd at that time. He made these young people's statements a central part of his speech in the GA. By doing so he was able to get peer-to-peer feedback about the needs of young people in a direct way and bring these needs to the UN. And what more, the young people saw their words being spoken in the UN – by this simple personal experience, the UN gets much closer to them.

The German and Dutch YDs do similar tour around the country every year, asking about their concerns and introducing the UN concepts, such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and others.

Then we had a Saudi Arabian YD who organized a side event on intercultural dialogue at his permanent mission last year. We always write articles about such events, upload the photos to our blogs (that are linked to our unyouth.com and national websites), Facebook etc.

YDs are selected on demonstrated experience in youth work or with a strong interest in youth related issues and therefore those are the people who have a network to which they can transmit the relevant UN messages.
Every YD works on issues of his/hers interest, the German and Swedish Yds promoted gay rights among other, the second German YD came from background of a Catholic NGO and was promoting youth participation, Finnish delegate chose women rights and me, I chose development and humanitarian aid. Hence I was mostly dealing with development cooperation and participated Europe-Africa Youth Summit in Libya just three months ago, where we had a working group on MDGs.

The Slovak YD Program is organized by the National Youth Council, in cooperation with the MFA and Ministry of Education. The delegate is chosen in May, so there is enough time to prepare and establish contact with local young people before going to the UN General Assembly in October.

My activities is this period were
- tour around relevant organizations: UNDP, Habitat for Humanity and many regional organizations
- An internship at the MFA in the summer, at Development and Humanitarian Aid Dpt.
- Live blog day by day from the GA in New York
- Live stream in Slovak radio

The tools we use to approach young people
- unyouth.com website
- similarly, there is an official UN website www.un.org/youth with guidelines how to establish YD Program in your country
- Social media, Facebook, very frequently
- Videos, e.g. from the GA Hall but also in Central Park to become closer to the youth
- We write articles, letters on youth issues, take part in many events, youth conferences

But the major strength of the program is that we are young people from different countries who cooperate, share best practices and inspire each other. What has worked in Germany is likely to work in Slovakia and I might try that activity, too.

I hope I have shared my enthusiasm for the program with you, thank you for your attention.

Dana Vyzinkarova

The CSD day by day

The Youth Delegates at the 49th CSD f hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhAhhhhhAt the Permanent mission of Germany, 14 Feb 2011

14 february 2011

The highlight of the first day would definitely be a side event at the permanent mission of Germany titled „More than just an opportunity – Youth Delegate Programs to the United Nations“ where I got chance to introduce the Slovakian YD Programme as the best practices. In my 10 min. speech I emphasized 3 main aspects:

- The necessity of continuous advancement of the programme. There is always chance to make the programme better and add something new to it, which I see positively in Slovakia. I gave few examples, among them our last success in arranging an internship at MFA as an integral part of the programme.

- I spoke about the structure and organization of the programme in Slovakia and about the selection procedure that differs country to country.

- I stressed the need to improve the link between youth delegates and young people, to share the examples and activities that proved working in different programme countries.
After my talk, I have received variety of questions, for example from the representative of the EU delegation and the Iraqi Ambassador.

15 february 2011

I participated in an informal session on the modalities of the World Youth Conference (WYC) 2011. The discussion was going around the possible dates, the duration and about who can take part in it. What is the problem with the dates? Well, there are many events in the worlds' calendar for June to August period; ECOSOC meeting in Geneva, African Union's high level group on youth and Ramadan – how can it be fitted in between, for the satisfaction of all? One thing became clear – the conference will take 2 days. There were efforts to make it longer, but potential budget implications killed the idea. Who can take part in the this upcoming UN conference is not clear either. One side wants to keep the participants list to government related youth and the other side advocates for a „real youth participation“ from all NGOs. Now, there is a talk about allowing youth organizations with ECOSOC status to participate in the WYC. The next informal is on 23 february 2011, we will find out more then.

The next informal of the day was on the youth resolution. Here one did not need long to notice presence of 2 school of thoughts:

1- Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Venezuela taking lead, against all clauses empowering the position of young people.

2- EU and Switzerland as the main proponents, promoting youth participation and calling upon member states to involve young people in the UN work.
The discussion went further than I imagined. The arguments of group 1 went along this line: We suggest to soften the language of the resolution because the countries are not in the same position to send youth representatives. Maybe you have also wondered, what have the youth delegates done so far? Here is my answer, with big thanks to those who helped with creating this list. I believe in benefits of the YD programme.

In the evening I visited Dambisa Moyo's talk on development assistance in the Free Library in Philadelphia. Unfortunately Moyo announced "No questions, please" while signing her new book.

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16 february 2011

In the morning we were working the previously mentioned positive input of the youth delegates, in case today's informal on youth resolution continues in the same spirit of yesterday's criticism of the YD programme. To my surprise, this meeting was much more constructive, maybe because it was the final meeting. In the end, we agreed by consensus on the text of the youth resolution.

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17 february 2011

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Youth delegates were meeting the UN Program on Youth and later the World Federation of UN Associations (WFUNA).

18 february 2011

The formal session of the CSD and adopting the youth resolution. I heard many comments like „it could have been worse“. I don't know.

Later that day I met our representative from the permanent mission as well as another member of the delegation to discuss the quickly passed week.

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I was glad to be live where a new youth resolution was created - so thanks to all who helped me becoming the first Slovak Youth Delegate at the CSD!

What have the Youth Delegates done so far?

The positive input of the Youth Delegates - maybe you have also wondered once? The list is not final yet.

1. Examples of best practices
Australia In 2009 the YD visited all states of Australia, meeting young people with all different backgrounds (with a specific focus on young people with fewer opportunities) and discussed their life circumstances and concerns; on each visit he asked the young people to write a letter to the prime minister, raising their relevant issues; he also brought these young people's voices to the UN and made it a central part of his speech. By doing so he was able to get peer-to-peer feedback about the needs of young people in a direct way and bring these needs to the UN.
Germany Every year German YD are doing a tour around Germany, meeting and discussing with young people; and organize a side event every year on the YD Program.
Saudi Arabia The Saudi Permanent Mission to the UN set up a YD Program in 2010 and organized a side event on intercultural understanding.
In Peru the Youth Delegate Program has created an interest for UN related topics among youth; the existence of such a programme has activated a group of young people in the National Youth Council who is working towards implementing UN resolutions and commitments into national/local policies. This interest can be achieved by a peer-to-peer encounter. Therefore Member States (also in developing countries) should look at the YD Program as an opportunity for development and cooperation.

2. What have we done concretely in the UN, New York
Example 1: Youth Delegates proposed language to the recent GA resolution A/RES/64/130, which was adopted by consensus, on non-formal education to prepare the young people for the green economy (Paragraph 5).
Example 2: The YDs also proposed paragraph on intergenerational dialogue to the resolution on ageing (at the GA in October 2010, RES/65/182, paragraph 13) which speaks about solidarity among generations.
Example 3 (to be further specified): Clause on HIV-tests.

And we still work on achieving more.

The UN Commission for Social Development: Delegates back to NYC

The 49th Session of the CSocD will take place at the UN, between 9 - 18 February 2011. The Slovak delegation is composed of 5 members, and me, the youth delegate, among them.

The youth delegates are traditionally represented in smaller number here than at the GA. Which countries send a youth delegate this year? To my knowledge, apart form us, Bulgaria, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Viet Nam. We will be a small group with big plans!

The youth resolution is negotiated every two years- during my stay at the last session of the GA, that was a year with no youth resolution. But the draft of the next resolution to be discussed and voted on on the 66th session of the GA (my successor's job), will be born and worked on here, at the CSocD.

The delegates' Googlegroup conversation is getting intense, which gives me a feeling of productive and exciting time at the UN in 1 week's time! Please check my blog again then.