The Organisation of American States (OAS) opened on Tuesday at its headquarters in Washington, DC, the Youth Conference of the Americas, with the participation of OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, and Panamanian First Lady Marta Linares de Martinelli. They all spoke of the important contribution young people make to the development of the nations of the hemisphere.
Secretary General Insulza welcomed the attendees and panellists, and stressed the importance of the meeting and the need for governments to provide the means to ensure that young people “truly are the future.”
He noted that “overall, it is said that the Americas are favoured by the so-called “demographic bonus”, which takes place when the proportion of the population that is of working age grows faster than the dependent population of school age or retirement age.”
“The advantage of the communities that experience this condition”, he said, “lies on the fact that they have a higher proportion of their populations in conditions to save, invest, work and produce, while increasingly fewer people require investments in education and health.”
He cautioned, however, that the “demographic bonus” runs the risk of being wasted owing to the precarious conditions and lack of access to opportunities facing the new generations of the hemisphere.
Solutions to youth problems
In this context, Secretary General Insulza expressed his hope that dialogues like the one held at the OAS “serve to advance the search for ways to respond to these and other pressing questions that present themselves when we face the issue of youth”.
He said the organisation has long been working on forging a future for new generations, and recalled that the 38th session of the General Assembly, held in Medellin, Colombia in June 2008, had the theme “Youth and Democratic Values”.
Along this line, Insulza stressed the importance of the Talent and Innovation Competition of the Americas, organised by the Young Americas Business Trust (YABT), an institution associated with the OAS that in the last eight years “has supported 24,301 young people from the hemisphere and has allowed for the development of more than 8400 business projects”.
The first lady of Panama, for her part, stressed the importance of youth as agents of change. “If we want young generations to have critical minds, to propose policies and take an interest in the future of the country, the state’s responsibility must always be focused on strengthening important pillars such as education and health.”
After the opening session, Secretary General Insulza also presented an award to the first lady in recognition of the project led by her office on early childhood development.
