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.
The African Youth Charter – a way to improve youth participation?
June 30, 2007 by Roger Schmidt, Switzerland
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I think the adoption of the African Youth Charter is a very laudable effort. I congratulate all the stakeholders of such a brilliant venture. I hope it shall not only remain a charter but efforts will be geared towards its application and guidance for youth development.
I suppose that this note was posted long ago. I should inform you that the charter has now been ratified by 13/4 countries, signed by 32 and is being popularised accross the African Union. The Ministers in charge of youth met in February 2008 to adopt a plan of action to accelerate the ratification, popularisation and implementation of the charter. Right now, the AU Commission is working with 11 member states to assist them in the process to get the charter ratified. This is in keeping with the provisions of the plan of action. Also as a follow-up to the year of the African Youth 2008, the heads of state and governments have also declared the years 2009-2018 as the decade on youth development in Africa, and a plan of action is being developed, which will serve as an implementation framework for the charter. Young people have played an active role in all this through their various NGO initiatives and through the African Youth Initiative and Creativity Awards, which was launched by the AU Chairperson in 2007. It is my hope that activities to popularise, advocate for the ratification of the charter and get it to come into force will increase accross youth networks accross the continent.
I strongly believe that Africa has the capacity to leapfrog from the bad side of underdevelopment to join the league of advanced Nations of the world the entire ratified charter be followed with hard and smart works. http://www.youthstrategists.ning.com