By Nojus Saad, Vice Chair of the Adolescents and Youth Constituency at PMNCH, and President and Chief Executive of Youth for Women Foundation
If rural young people account for more than 55 percent of the world’s youth population, with 88 percent of them living in low-income countries (UNFPA) - then why does youth representation in leadership positions have an urban bias? Are governments and international institutions really working for meaningful youth engagement, or is it just tokenism?
The weak youth participatory interventions deployed by governments and institutions have led to a substantial rural-urban divide that forms the basis of the health and rights disparities between urban and rural youth, leading to increased urbanization, geographical isolation, and marginalization of the COVID-19 response and recovery in remote rural and peri-urban communities.
Rural adolescents and youth are one of the most vulnerable groups across the world. Even before the pandemic, marginalized adolescents and young people faced multiple intersecting challenges to their health, rights, and wellbeing. It is estimated by UNFPA that 175 million young people in low-income countries cannot read a full sentence (majority in rural areas), 500 million live on less than $2 a day, and 80 percent of young rural workers are engaged in informal employment (such as family farms and child labour). Young rural women are disproportionately affected by this rural marginalization, with significantly greater rates of school dropouts, forced marriages, gender-based violence, honor killings, teenage pregnancies, and unpaid care work. The Malala Fund estimated that the pandemic could lead to the permanent termination of education at school for 20 million marginalized girls, adding to the 129 million who were already deprived of education. This is combined with the escalating, hidden and unreported cases of gender-based violence faced by rural women.
It is only in the last few years that meaningful youth engagement has been taken seriously by governments and international organizations. As IFAD stated, “participation and engagement of rural youth has been traditionally a subject of the lowest priority: either it has been a minor part of holistic strategies dealing primarily with employment, health or education, or it has been restricted to NGO activities related to the broader issue of civic education”. These exclusive strategies contradict the Global Consensus Statement on Meaningful Adolescent and Youth Engagement - widening the gap between these two sections of young people, increasing inequalities and now making COVID-19 response and recovery increasingly challenging in marginalized communities. Young people in rural societies must have equal rights and opportunities to access leadership positions to ensure a healthier and more inclusive rural transformation through meaningful youth engagement.
Growing up in an isolated semi-urban small town in northern Iraq myself has made me experience the urban-rural divide at a personal level. Living in a remote community, where there is limited access to education and services, weak infrastructures, and restricted human rights, made my journey to well-being even more difficult. Yet, I have, at the age of 20, founded and led a unique international civil society organization (Youth For Women Foundation), headquartered in California, to empower youth and women in the fight for gender equality and internet inclusion in marginalized communities. I have, with a lot of effort and hard work, become a global activist for human rights with multiple international institutions, proving that a young leader from a marginalized community can help transform the world.
As we enter the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, most young people in rural and vulnerable communities (such as those belonging to LGBTQ+ communities) are often left out of the decision-making and leadership opportunities. These opportunities prove necessary for them to challenge the devastating impact the pandemic has had on their health and rights, especially those related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Civil society and UN agencies must adopt youth participative interventions that not only prioritize urban engagement and development, but also ensure the inclusion of young people from remote rural geographies that have rigid traditional norms, weak social capital, and non-existent youth engagement standards. Most of the rural-urban disparities can be reversed if there is a stronger international focus on rural youth’s education, empowerment, and digitalization. When resources were made available, young people stepped up to lead the primary response and recovery against COVID-19 as peer educators, healthcare workers and community mobilisers.
For instance, PMNCH, hosted by the World Health Organization, is adopting one of the most inclusive and powerful youth-led policies in the institution. Apart from a specific constituency for Adolescents and Youth (AYC), young people are included as leaders across all of PMNCH’s governing structures, with compensation for their time and effort, to ensure engagement in decision-making at all levels. I am proud to be the Vice-Chair of the AYC Constituency, and to announce that PMNCH and Youth For Women Foundation are sustainable advocates for meaningful engagement of the most isolated rural and vulnerable youth, contributing to closing the lifelong rural youth engagement gap.
The world needs to hear the unheard voices and struggles of rural youth and should give them equal rights and opportunities to be at the forefront of change. They must have access to leadership positions that equip them to not only champion a healthier and more inclusive rural transformation, but an inclusive global transformation. It is only with meaningful engagement of rural young voices, that humankind will see the achievement of the 17 SDGs by 2030.