A/RES/50/81
Page 13
3.
Voluntary community services involving youth
37. Where they do not already exist, Governments should consider the
establishment of voluntary service programmes for youth. Such programmes
could provide alternatives to military service, or might constitute a required
element in educational curricula, depending on national policies and
priorities. Youth camps, community service projects, environmental protection
and inter-generational cooperation programmes should be included among the
opportunities offered. Youth organizations should be directly involved in
designing, planning, implementing and evaluating such voluntary service
programmes. In addition, international cooperation programmes organized
between youth organizations in developed and developing countries should be
included to promote intercultural understanding and development training.
4.
Needs created by technological changes
38. Governments, in particular those of developed countries, should
encourage the creation of employment opportunities for young people in fields
that are rapidly evolving as a result of technological innovation. A subset
of the employment data compiled by Governments should track the employment of
youth into those fields marked by newly emerging technologies. Measures
should be taken to provide ongoing training for youth in this area.
39. Special attention should be paid to developing and disseminating
approaches that promote flexibility in training systems and collaboration
between training institutions and employers, especially for young people in
high-technology industries.
C.
Hunger and poverty
40. Over one billion people in the world today live in unacceptable
conditions of poverty, mostly in developing countries, particularly in rural
areas of low-income countries in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America
and the Caribbean and the least developed countries. Poverty has various
manifestations; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access
to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from
illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments; and social
discrimination and exclusion; it is also characterized by a lack of
participation in decision-making and in civil and socio-cultural life. Poverty
is inseparably linked to lack of access to or loss of control over resources,
including land, skills, knowledge, capital and social connections. Without
those resources, people have limited access to institutions, markets,
employment and public services. Young people are particularly affected by
this situation. Therefore, specific measures are needed to address the
juvenilization and feminization of poverty.
41. Hunger and malnutrition remain among the most serious and intractable
threats to humanity, often preventing youth and children from taking part in
society. Hunger is the result of many factors: mismanagement of food
production and distribution; poor accessibility; maldistribution of financial
resources; unwise exploitation of natural resources; unsustainable patterns of
consumption; environmental pollution; natural and human-made disasters;
conflicts between traditional and contemporary production systems; irrational
population growth; and armed conflicts.
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