How to address the needs of the world’s young people and shape more meaningful youth policies that resonate in the post-2015 development landscape was the central question explored in a major international meeting that took place in the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, this week.

The First Global Forum on Youth Policies, held from 28 to 30 October, provided an opportunity for 700 participants to examine the social and developmental role of youth policy in areas as diverse as health, the environment, housing, education, employment and the justice system. They also discussed the need to pursue multisectoral approaches to such policies, looked at the key ingredients for policy development, debated regional strategies to take youth policy forward and shared experiences of interventions in action. 

The 1995 World Programme of Action for Youth, the original global framework for youth policies, was a springboard for the debate. It was argued in the meeting that while progress has been made in the past 20 years, with 122 countries having current youth policies and a further 36 updating theirs, much more needs to be done to design well-resourced and inclusive policies catering to young people.

During a session on the guiding principles for youth policy development, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures spoke about lessons learned from the AIDS response that can take youth policies forward in the twenty-first century. He highlighted a range of UNAIDS initiatives in which young people take the lead and have a direct role in policy development.

Such initiatives include CrowdOutAIDS, a collaborative online social media project that produced strategic recommendations on how UNAIDS engages with youth organizations, the pact for social transformation, a coalition of 25 youth-led organizations committed to working strategically and collaboratively in the AIDS response, and the ACT 2015 campaign, which promotes collective action to ensure that HIV and universal access to sexual and reproductive rights and harm reduction services are central to the post-2015 development agenda.

Concrete ways of taking youth policies forward over the next five years and actions and strategies needed to build on the first global forum were explored at length and participants agreed to redouble their efforts to make sure that young people’s voices are heard.

The First Global Forum on Youth Policies was co-organized by the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, UNDP, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. It was hosted by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Youth and Sports and the youthpolicy.org team. 

Quotes

GENEVA/WASHINGTON, 15 January 2014—During a high-level meeting and discussions in Washington last week, UNAIDS and the World Bank Group endorsed four areas of action to accelerate efforts that address the interrelated challenges of AIDS, inequality and extreme poverty.

UNAIDS and the World Bank Group have committed to work closely with UNDP and other international partners, to address the social and structural drivers of the HIV epidemic that put people at greater risk of HIV and deny them access to services. These social and structural drivers include gender inequality, stigma and discrimination, lack of access to education and unstable livelihoods. UNAIDS and the World Bank Group will advocate for:

1. Aligning health and development efforts around country-led time-bound goals towards ending extreme poverty and AIDS, with special attention to the inclusion of the poorest and most marginalized populations. Areas of focus will include: supporting countries to adopt progressive legal systems that remove discriminatory laws, especially among populations most vulnerable to HIV infection; increasing access to income, adequate housing and safe working conditions; and accelerating reforms towards universal health coverage and universal access to HIV services and commodities.
2. Urging the post-2015 development agenda to include targets towards ending AIDS alongside the goal of universal health coverage, so that no one falls into poverty or is kept in poverty due to payment for AIDS treatment or health care.
3. Promoting national and global monitoring and implementation research. Actions will include: working closely with global partners and countries to innovate and monitor service delivery, including for HIV, especially to the poorest and the most marginalized; and intensify implementation research to capture and codify innovative approaches to address the linkages between efforts towards ending extreme poverty and ending AIDS. As part of this effort, the World Bank Group will launch a major new trial to better understand how social protection systems reduce HIV infection, particularly among young women in the highest burden hyper-endemic countries.
4. Convening two high-level meetings in 2014 with national policy leaders and experts on ending AIDS and extreme poverty. The first meeting will be convened in Southern Africa to share current research and discuss how it can be translated into practice. The second meeting will be held during the International AIDS Conference in July 2014 in Melbourne.

Despite unprecedented progress over the past decade in the global response to HIV, economic inequality, social marginalization and other structural factors have continued to fuel the HIV epidemic. The epidemic continues to undermine efforts to reduce poverty and marginalization. HIV deepens poverty, exacerbates social and economic inequalities, diminishes opportunities for economic and social advancement and causes profound human hardship.

“Ending the AIDS epidemic and extreme poverty is within our power,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director, UNAIDS. “Our combined efforts will contribute to a global movement working to ensure that every person can realize their right to quality healthcare and live free from poverty and discrimination.”

“Just as money alone is insufficient to end poverty, science is powerless to defeat AIDS unless we tackle the underlying social and structural factors,” said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. “To end both AIDS and poverty, we need sustained political will, social activism, and an unwavering commitment to equity and social justice.”

“Stigma, discrimination and marginalization stand in the way of fully realizing the promise of HIV prevention and treatment technologies,” said Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator. “We know that where laws and policies enable people affected by HIV to participate with dignity in daily life without fearing discrimination, they are more likely to seek prevention, care and support services.”

Improving health services and outcomes is critical to ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The recent Lancet Commission on Investing in Health estimated that up to 24% of economic growth in low- and middle-income countries was due to better health outcomes. The payoffs are immense: the Commission concluded that investing in health yields a 9 to 20-fold return on investment.

Investing in health also means investing in equity. Essential elements of a human rights-based response to HIV include: enabling laws, policies and initiatives that protect and promote access to effective health and social services, including access to secure housing, adequate nutrition and other essential services. Such measures can help protect people affected by HIV from stigma, discrimination, violence and economic vulnerability. HIV-sensitive social protection is already a key component of the UNAIDS vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.

“Pills on a shelf do not save lives,” said Sveta Moroz of the Union of Women of Ukraine Affected by HIV. “To end the AIDS epidemic for everyone will require a people-centered approach driven by the community and based on social justice. It demands an approach that ensures basic human rights to safe housing, access to healthcare, food security and economic opportunity. These are rights that actively remove barriers to real people’s engagement in effective HIV prevention and care.”

UNAIDS and the World Bank Group will work to ensure that these efforts feature prominently in the post-2015 global development agenda, and are integral elements in ending AIDS, achieving universal health coverage, ending extreme poverty and inequality and building shared prosperity.

GENEVA/NEW DELHI, 12 December 2013—UNAIDS expresses its deep concern that, through its recent decision on the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the Supreme Court of India has re-criminalized adult consensual same sex sexual conduct. In 2009, the Delhi High Court had found unconstitutional the application of the 150-year-old law criminalizing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” between consenting adults. Now, again in India, gay and other men who have sex with men, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

“The Delhi High Court decision in 2009 had restored dignity for millions of people in India, and was an example of the type of reform we need for supportive legal environments that are necessary for effective national AIDS responses,” said the Executive Director of UNAIDS Michel Sidibé. “We want government and civil society to be able to provide HIV information and services to all people, including gay and other men who have sex with men, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, and for them to be able to access the services without fear of criminalization.”

The 2009 decision by the Delhi High Court to annul the law was widely considered a milestone against homophobia and towards zero HIV-related discrimination. In the past four years since the law was annulled, there has been a more than 50% increase in the number of sites providing HIV services for gay and other men who have sex with men, as well as transgender people in India.

For the protection of public health and human rights, UNAIDS calls on India and all countries to repeal laws that criminalize adult consensual same sex sexual conduct. Such criminalization hampers HIV responses across the world. These laws not only violate human rights but also make it more difficult to deliver HIV prevention and treatment services to a population which is particularly affected by HIV. On average globally, gay and other men who have sex with men are 13 times more likely than the rest of the population to be living with HIV.

UNAIDS urges all governments to protect the human rights of gay and other men who have sex with men, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, through repealing criminal laws against adult consensual same sex sexual conduct; implementing laws to protect them from violence and discrimination; promoting campaigns that address homophobia and transphobia; and ensuring that adequate health services are provided to address their needs.

In the 2011 United Nations Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS, all UN Member States committed to removing legal barriers and passing laws to protect vulnerable populations. 

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners to maximize results for the AIDS response. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.