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Regeneration: Youth activism’s congress opens in Quebec
Today’s young activists meet to exchange their experiences and best practices and to claim their place in history as the Regeneration …
As thousands of youths from more than 140 countries descend on Quebec city, Canada on August 10 to attend the 4th Youth Congress the question on every one’s lips is how well developing nations will be represented in this international youth meeting.
Over the past weeks, dozens of youth delegates have been refused temporary visas into Canada by the authorities and there is no knowing how many of them will be able to overturn their refusals in time for the opening on August 10.
The 11 day event, to which over a thousand young activists from 140 nations were invited, is to focus on youth led development and was in part sponsored by the Canadian government. “It’s a paradox”, said Christian Robitaille, the event’s general director, “its supported by the government and yet the government is refusing them”.
Robitaille said that the youth delegates were selected from more than 15 thousand applicants by an international panel and that those who were chosen are “exactly the kind of young people we want to bring in … the team is all about youth and development”. The event’s general director said he hoped that there would be at least 200 delegates from developing nations, as, after all, they are the youth that can best represent development needs.
Although Immigration Canada refused to confirm how many youth delegates have been refused, a spokesperson, Jaqueline Roby assured that they “understand the importance of the meeting and are very concerned about the World Youth Congress”. Robitaille on the other hand hopes that calling the youth delegates “activists” has not had a negative effect on their applications, the young people have been selected specifically for their involvement in their local communities. “We’ve invited them because they’re engaged, we hope that they’re not being turned away because they’re engaged”, he said.
Youth-led development
Supposing that enough developing world representatives make it to the congress, the three letters that will define the meeting will be YLD, or youth led development. The term, that was coined during the Congress’ first meeting in Hawaii in 1999, refers to all those projects that rely on the dynamism and innovation of youth to achieve social and environmental goals in local communities. Whether it is alleviating poverty, fighting climate change or protecting the human rights of women and children, youth have an important role to play in the world’s future development.
Another of the WYC’s themes will, of course, be sustainability, inextricably linked to the UN Millennium Goals endorsed by almost all of the world’s nations and in particular aims to provide youths with the tools needed to stimulate sustainable growth in their communities.
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