Written by: Martin Martinov
In late August, the campus of Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University is usually calm: students leave Turkey for holidays, and most professors are overseas delivering conferences or conducting research. Yet the hot summer of 2015 will stand apart in the history of the 150-year-old university. A hundred students and fresh graduates representing the youth of G20 countries, gathered on the European side of the Bosphorus strait to elaborate a Communiqué addressing global youth problems. This Youth-20 2015 Summit in Istanbul, Turkey comes as part of a G20 global outreach framework, with annual youth summits traditionally held by each member-state hosting the official G20 Summit.
Every year five prospective future leaders are carefully chosen by each G20 country to represent their young compatriots in an international procedure closely following the negotiation patterns of the G20 forum. Online talks via a digital platform are typically followed by a visit to the host country, where the delegates engage in brainstorming within several working panels in order to produce recommendations. These recommendations are designed to complement the reflection of the officials of G20 countries. The outcome of this meticulous work is then refined by youth Head Delegates, which then takes the form of a Final Communiqué to be presented to the G20 Heads of State during their Summit, as well as, to be actively promoted by each youth delegation on the national level.
Whereas traditionally, the agenda of Youth Summits try to follow that of the official G20 Summit for maximum synergy, the interesting innovation of the Turkish Presidency in Y20 2015 was the decision to focus the discussions on youth problems. This initiative proved to be extremely effective; it is difficult to imagine somebody more competent and more suitable to address the challenges of the next generation, than the brightest representatives thereof. This year the youth of G20 countries has chosen to tackle three major challenges: Unemployment, Education and Peace. Predictably, the lively negotiations have shown that the new generation of upcoming leaders seems to be free from national biases and shows a great degree of mutual confidence and cooperation when confronted with problems that affect the youth regardless of race, gender or colour of passport.
Talking about unemployment, young people, most of whom had already started to experience the harsh realities of the labor market, pointed out the necessity for the G20 to set a quantifiable target on reducing youth unemployment. It currently stagnates at the shocking level of 13% globally. The existence of such a goal would facilitate the coordination of efforts of G20 countries and was aimed at incentivizing small- and medium-sized enterprises (incuding start-ups) to hire young people. This proposition that can be traced back to the Y20 2013 Summit in Russia and Y20 2014 Summit in Australia, has now been complemented with concrete policy proposals. These include the creation of credit facilities, fiscal incentives and digital services available for the companies that accept the “risk” of employing young people.
The initiative of the Turkish G20 Presidency concerning the availability of basic infrastructure and digital technologies across all strata of population has also been reconsidered by young diplomats. According to the proposition of young specialists, the public and private investment in R&D, including information technologies, combined with entrepreneurship incentives could cover the technological needs of the population. This would simultaneously provide more young people with stable jobs and revenues.
Education was another sphere of expertise of the delegates to Y20 2015, and although most of them came from the leading universities of their respective countries, they had quite a lot to discuss on that panel. Even in the most developed countries, educational systems face the problems of skill mismatch, lack of technical training, scarcity of resources and huge discrepancies between social and gender groups.
The solutions proposed by young delegates were set to match the three priorities of the Turkish Presidency in G20: Inclusiveness, Implementation, and Investment. Following this logical pattern, the brainstorming groups first identified the most vulnerable social groups to be targeted by inclusiveness policies. Then, they developed innovative proposals on turning education into a tool of social cohesion, bringing education and labor market closer together, increasing the supply of quality teachers, and creating lifelong training opportunities.
Yet what really matters for global education across the developing and developed world is the lack of investment, and in this field the Y20 2015 Summit benefited from the diversity of its candidates’ backgrounds. An initiative group of young people with experience in the financial services industry came up with probably, the most innovative proposition of the Summit – the creation of Educational Banks. These institutions, modeled on sector-specific banks in other industries (e.g. Agricultural and Construction banks) will be charged with directing the flow of funds into the sphere of education, and the exact financial schemes and mechanisms described in the final Communiqué of the Youth Summit will ensure the social utility of the proposed institutions.
The panel discussing peace issues was set up with a very ambitious goal: to converge into one voice of G20 youth the ideas of young people representing 20 different countries, 20 different cultures and 20 different realities. Yet the discussions surprisingly revealed that the youth tend to see ways of cooperation instead of blind alleys, common values instead of national disparities and concrete actions instead of vague rhetoric. This year the discussions of the young ambassadors of G20 countries were reinforced by the dialogue with their counterparts from developing countries invited as honorable guests by the Turkish presidency. Together they developed a visionary stance on the migration and refugee crisis several weeks before its outbreak in September. Today the shocking images sent by media worldwide and felt in every corner of the world make ever more important the implementation of the initiatives put forward by young people representing the vision of their generation on the current humanitarian crisis. The professional language of this chapter of the Communiqué with references to diplomatic concepts and international conventions leaves no doubt as to the feasibility of the initiatives aimed at the peaceful integration of migrants and refugees into the social systems of the receiving countries. It is encouraging to see that G20 youth are not stepping back in solving the humanitarian crisis but are ready to provide help in the form of free university-based law clinics, by participating in refugee councils and fostering the intercultural and inter-religious dialogue.
The Final Communiqué has been solemnly signed, the gala dinner is over, and so is the rich cultural program proposed by the Turkish Presidency to the youth delegates. The old walls of Boğaziçi University are ready to welcome the new classes of students. However, the most challenging part of work for Y20 delegates has just begun. Each of them is now an ambassador of the global Y20 community responsible for the domestic advocacy of the proposals of the Youth Summit. Everybody from their families and friends to ministers and deputies should hear the common voice of G20 youth calling on the global community to resolve the problems threatening the future of the young generation. Will this ambitious goal be achieved? It is almost impossible to judge right now, for the process is bound to take at least several years. Yet the first trustworthy benchmark of the real efficiency of the Y20 Turkey 2015 outcome will become available as early as in November, upon the publication of the Final Communiqué by G20 leaders in Antalya. Will this document include any initiatives proposed by the delegates to the G20 Youth Summit in Turkey? The youth is certainly taking its chances.
Featured Image credt: CC Martin Martinov
