The African Youth Charter - a way to improve youth participation?
June 30, 2007 by Roger Schmidt, Switzerland
It is great if you read a document you really can agree with: The African Youth Charter is such a document. On 21 pages and 31 articles, this treaty between the member states of the African Union spells out what is crucial in the field of youth participation: National youth policies, National youth adminstration, real help for capacity-building, health issues, basic rights for young people, the right to participate in policy-making processes. A lot of issues are mentioned and by reading it (without getting too deep into the issues) I have nothing to object.
However, the African Youth Charter has been adopted by the African Union on July, 2, 2006. However, the website of the African Union lists only one country (i.e. Mali) that has actually signed the charter and no country has ratified it yet. Therefore, it is important to note that the African Youth Charter becomes only official if 15 countries have ratified it (cf. Article 30).
Is the Youth Charter a good idea? Should Lutheran churches promote it? Should Lutheran youth organizations start to lobby their governments and parliments to ratify the African Youth Charter and should we work to get them to implement them? I am very interested to learn more about your opinion.
