Keynote address at the National Youth Dialogue Conference

Hon. Minister of Youth Affairs,

Deputy Ministers, Commissioners and Directors,

Distinguished colleagues of civil society organizations and United Nations,

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, 

I am pleased to participate in this important activity on the launching and popularization of the revised National Youth Policy and discussion on concrete steps for its implementation.

It is my understanding that the revised National Youth Policy is the result of a wide process of consultations with young women and men around the country, including by using new technologies. This innovative process of consultation is a demonstration of the commitment of the Minister of Youth Affairs and his team to hear the opinions and suggestions of as many young people as possible.

The world today is home to the largest generation of young people in its history: standing at a staggering 1.9 Billion who are between the ages of 10 to 24 with close to 90 percent living in developing countries, like Sierra Leone. As we know, Sierra Leone has a very youthful population, with about 30% of the population between the ages of 18 and 35, constituting approximately 49% of the country’s labour force.

Sierra Leone is also faced with the 18th highest child marriage rate in the world with 13 per cent of girls married by age 15 and 39 per cent of girls married by 18 years of age.  Nearly 30 per cent of girls begin childbearing by the age of 18. Child marriage, teenage pregnancies and poverty are three prominent factors in adolescent girls’ secondary school drop-out rates; and girls who are out of school are at greater risk of child marriage, early childbearing and exposure to sexual exploitation and physical violence.

In addition, youth unemployment is a huge challenge, and most of the youth that have work are in the informal sector, working for little pay and under hazardous and exploitative conditions. Many young people continue to risk their lives to find a better future elsewhere by taking on the challenge of migration, whether rural-urban or across borders. Many young Sierra Leoneans today also find themselves in fragile contexts, affected by lack of security and stability, at home or in their local communities and beyond.

With such demographic and development realities, it must be more than clear that the Sierra Leone that we want, a country characterized by shared prosperity, social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and peace, cannot be achieved without the full involvement of young people and the creation of conditions that allow them to reach their full potential. 

In other words, two key preconditions for Sierra Leone to transition from a low-income country status to a middle-income status by 2035 in line with the objectives of the MTNP (2019-2023) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development relate to young people. First, any efforts to accelerate shared growth and sustainable development must engage young people both as active participants and significant beneficiaries. Further, if the impacts of such efforts are to be sustained, young people of today need to own, refresh and propel them well into the future.  As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pointed out - ‘Young people decide whether we achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals’.

Yet, young people in Sierra Leone are often portrayed in some quarters as liabilities, with young men, in particular, being depicted as potential perpetrators of violence, while young women are seen as passive victims.

This is at odds with the fact that the vast majority of young Sierra Leoneans dream of a new and better Sierra Leone, and have a commitment to development and peace. Young people should therefore be valued for their potential, not seen as a problem.

An important way to counter damaging and inaccurate narratives about young people is to amplify the voices of young men and women themselves. Decisions made by older people will affect them for the rest of their lives. So, they deserve a place at the decision-making table, if they are to be fully engaged in national efforts to build a new Sierra Leone.

The good news is that Sierra Leone has in recent years made decisive strides towards the empowerment of young women and men. These include the creation of a dedicated Ministry of Youth Affairs, the establishment of the National Youth Commission, the creation of the National Youth Service, and the establishment of youth structures – The National Youth Council, District Youth Councils, Chiefdom Youth Councils and Zonal Youth Councils. Sierra Leone has also approved a new policy on the right to education of pregnant girls. 

The revised National Youth Policy will help to ensure a more coordinated work with all the institutions and mechanisms I have just mentioned as well as with UN Agencies and our development partners. The Policy offers an integrated, systematic, institutional approach to youth empowerment and development and will help to coordinate all efforts dedicated to youth programmes and projects.

It should be noted that the above-listed positive changes in the country are occurring within a more enabling global context following the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution 2250 on youth, peace and security (YPS) on 9 December 2015.  This historic resolution marked a fundamental shift in acknowledging the positive role young women and men play in the development of nations as well as in the maintenance of peace and security, and the importance of enabling their meaningful participation in decision-making at all levels.

Most recently, UN Resolution 2535, approved in 2020, calls on member states to ensure full, effective and meaningful participation of youth in their countries’ peace and development agendas, without discrimination of any kind. This includes any bias on the grounds of race, colour, sex, gender identity, language, socio-economic status, disability, religion or belief, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Such participation is key to advancing national development and peace objectives that take into account the needs of all segments of society.

In September 2018, during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, launched the UN Youth strategy, which envisions a world in which the human rights of all young people are realized so they can achieve their full potential and advance sustainable development and peace.

As you know, Sierra Leone has been selected among the other 10 countries in the world to roll out the UN youth strategy. The Youth Strategy guides the work of the entire UN family with and for young people across its three pillars, namely peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development.

Sierra Leone will pilot the acceleration of efforts towards the achievement of the five priority areas included in the UN youth strategy, which are related to youth participation and enhancement of youth voices for the promotion of a peaceful and just and sustainable society; access to quality education and health; access to decent work and employment; rights of young people and political participation; peace and resilience building.

With the increasing recognition of young people as a positive force in building sustainable societies, the big challenge now is how to make it yield a real difference in the actual lives of young people. This is critical to countering the scepticism and distrust of public institutions and public officeholders that remains prevalent among young Sierra Leoneans.

In considering the issue of youth empowerment for development, it is worth remembering that all young people are as part of growing up seeking ways to meet their basic physical and social needs. They also seek to acquire knowledge, skills, relationships, and values that they deem necessary for participating successfully in adolescence and adult life. Their core needs – safety and well-being, quality education and training, decent employment, wholesome relationships and social networks, and meaningful participation in community life – are necessarily interconnected.  Failing to meet one core need almost inevitably undermines the fulfilment of the others. For example, hundreds of 10 to14-year-old girls in Sierra Leone are knocked off the track of healthy and productive transition into young adulthood by domestic violence and forced marriage. These human rights violations often abruptly terminate the girls’ schooling, harm their health, isolate them from their peers, and undermine their life-long economic productivity, leading to a vulnerable adulthood and old age.  

It has been, however, demonstrated that investing in the capacity, agency and leadership of young women and young men can strengthen their ability to collaboratively lead development efforts, and to use their skills to tackle other challenges that affect their lives.

We know that sustainable development would be accelerated if significant investments are made to expand the health, social and economic assets of young people.  It is smart economics to do so since their central placement in household, community and national life cycles means that it is the young people of today that will determine the development prospects of the country.

In reality, some of the investments required to maximize the potentials of young people as drivers of sustainable development do not entail huge financial outlays.  For instance, the returns on efforts to expand access to secondary education for young people could be significantly boosted by providing additional resources to close the gaps between boys and girls in the completion of secondary education. Efforts at increasing youth employment and employability must also have a strong gender equity focus as a recent ILO report shows that globally, women and girls account for nearly 70 percent of the young people that are neither in employment nor in education or training. In addition, more resources and efforts need to be committed to increasing access to sexual and reproductive health information and services, for young people, especially adolescent girls, to provide them with a solid foundation for a healthy and happy adulthood.

In combination, these interventions represent one of the most cost-effective means of fully harnessing the skills, energies, and creativity of young people for sustained national development. They help to increase their life-long opportunities, starting with higher levels of schooling, prevention of unintended pregnancies, later and healthier starts to childbearing, and more opportunities for decent employment. 

Finally, it is critical to sustain ongoing expansions in transport, communications and energy infrastructure to boost economic growth. To be sustainable, however, this growth must be managed to yield decent jobs, improved health outcomes, and enhanced life opportunities for the majority of young people. This is because investments in the education, health, safety, skills and economic productivity of young people directly help to build the human capital required for multiplying and sustaining the effects of the investments in roads, ports, power plants, and factories.

In conclusion, the gist of my keynote address is that far greater attention needs to be given to how young people more actively participate in and benefit from sustainable development for a resilient, healthy and productive Sierra Leone. In particular, in the spirit of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development of ‘leaving no one behind, these efforts must especially be geared to positively impacting the life chances of disadvantaged young people such as those living with disabilities, those living in remote hard-to-reach rural communities, and those trapped in economic destitution as a result of unemployment or underemployment.

We should, therefore, celebrate HE President Maada Bio’s vision on human capital development being partly operationalized through the Free Quality Education Programme. Development of young people’s skills, creativity, imagination and innovations are all relevant aspects of the Human Capital Development Strategy promoted by His Excellency the President and, therefore, also captured in the National Youth Policy.

The UN will continue to provide support to the Government and Ministry of Youth Affairs to ensure that the revised Youth Policy is implemented and no one is left behind.

Thank you.