UN News: What changes do you think the UN needs to make in order to reach and be more relevant in young people's lives?
JW: There are two approaches that we can adopt. Firstly, I think the UN has a responsibility to go to young people and meet them where they are. We cannot expect all youth from different communities, religions and ethnic backgrounds to come to the UN.
For example, this International Youth Day, 12 August, I am celebrating with young people in Iraq, where the theme of “Youth Building Peace” is very relevant in their national context. I come from a region that is constantly affected by conflict, and have personally seen the effects it has had on young people. In Iraq, I will meet with close to 1,000 youth, discussing the problems they are facing.
There, I will also convene meetings with the Government and other stakeholders to see how we can resource youth development in Iraq and devise methods to constantly and substantively engage young people in preventing conflicts as well as in post-conflict reconciliation activities.
There is a need to see young people not as a liability but as an opportunity
Most often the UN jargon is not very familiar to the young people doing good work in advancing the lives of youth in their villages and communities. By taking the UN closer to young people I do not necessarily mean physically, but through new technologies, such as social media, to connect with youth in a language they can understand.
The second approach is to have the UN system look at young people. Today they comprise more than half of the world’s population – the largest youth population in the history of the world. There is a need to see young people not as a liability but as an opportunity, and to see how we can proactively engage them in all discussions, at all levels.