…Calls for reforms that make young people central to peace, climate, economic recovery
The Nigerian government has called for global reforms to empower youths and embed young people at the heart of national and international action on peace, climate change, and economic recovery.
Specifically, we’re demanding that young people be repositioned from beneficiaries to partners in solving the world’s most pressing challenges.
Speaking at the 12th International Youth Conference (IYC12) during the United Nations General Assembly’s 80th (UNGA80) High-Level Week, Personal Assistant to the President on Domestic & North East affairs, Comrade Mahmud Muhammad, said that “thirty years after its adoption by the UN General Assembly in 1995, the gap between policy commitments and implementation reality remains significant across most countries.”
The conference, themed “Youth Solutions for a Changing World” and hosted by the International Organisation of Youth (IOY) in collaboration with UN-Habitat, UNITAR, UNEP, MGCY, IAAI GloCha, and UN Geneva Beyond Lab, featured innovation labs, policy roundtables, and intergenerational dialogues aimed at producing a youth declaration to echo through UN halls.
Muhammad argued that current approaches to youth development are fundamentally flawed, noting that “Instead of treating youth issues as a separate policy sector, integration across all government functions becomes necessary.”
Drawing from Nigeria’s experience with 70 million young people aged 15-35 representing 35% of the population, Muhammad presented the country’s post-conflict reconstruction efforts as a “unique laboratory for testing youth-focused policy implementation in post-conflict settings.”
The North East Development Commission, established in 2017, “has executed over 700 projects with significant youth components, providing concrete evidence about what works in scaling international youth commitments to local contexts,” he told delegates.
Muhammad explained that “rather than the regular job creation approaches, effective scaling requires sector-specific interventions that address market failures preventing youth participation in particular economic activities.”
He noted that constitutional reforms reducing the minimum age for political candidates demonstrate “how legal frameworks must evolve to accommodate youth political participation,” with the presidential age requirement dropping from 40 to 35 years and gubernatorial from 35 to 30 years.
Addressing gaps in the original 1995 youth framework, Muhammad noted that climate change adaptation represents an emerging priority that wasn’t adequately addressed in the original World Programme of Action but requires integration into contemporary scaling efforts.
He called for fundamental changes in international cooperation, arguing that “partnerships must evolve beyond traditional donor-recipient relationships toward mutual learning arrangements.”
In his words: “The international community must move beyond treating youth development as a humanitarian concern toward recognising youth empowerment as essential to addressing global challenges, including climate change, technological transformation, demographic transitions, and conflict prevention.”
“This recognition requires policy frameworks that position young people as partners in problem-solving rather than beneficiaries of problem-solving efforts.”
He added that “scaling the World Programme of Action ultimately requires political commitment that goes beyond rhetorical support to include resource allocation, institutional reform, and accountability mechanisms that ensure implementation matches stated intentions.”
