Today's youth population will grow to 2 billion by the year 2025. All of that growth will be in the developing world, where in the future eight of every nine young persons will be living in a developing country. Young people from rural communities will continue to make up a large percentage of this total population. In 1990, there were an estimated 800 million youth living in rural areas and a little over 400 million in the cities. Although the percentages of rural youth will go down in the next 30 years, their total number will remain fairly constant.
Youth represent the future and hope of every country. The high return on resources invested in young people today have both immediate and long term benefits. Where they exist and are functioning well, rural youth programmes play an important role in building life skills of individual young people; strengthening families and communities; and working towards sustainable agricultural and rural development as a major contributor to the overall progress of a country. FAO works with member countries to strengthen and expand rural youth programmes enabling them to reach large numbers of out-of-school girls and boys, and young women and men with high quality non-formal educational programming in sustainable agriculture, health, nutrition and other priority areas.
This is FAO's second expert consultation on rural youth. The first entitled Expert Consultation on Rural Youth and Young Farmers in Developing Countries was held in 1985 as part of the United Nations International Youth Year. Over the past ten years many changes have taken place that affect rural young people and programmes that work with them. A whole new set of circumstances place youth at high risk in rural areas, including limited access to land and natural resources, HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, violence, discrimination, broken families, and high birth rates among adolescent girls. Continuing lack of educational opportunities and limited possibilities of gainful employment, combined with low standards of living, cause rural youth to migrate to the cities in even greater numbers than a decade ago. Government rural youth programmes are faced with new challenges caused by structural adjustment, downsizing, reorganization and reduced budgets.
Because of the significantly changed situation since the first one in 1985, a decision was made to hold a second consultation to develop new recommendations to guide FAO, governments and youth programmes in strengthening and expanding rural youth work and to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the International Youth Year. Twenty-three high level experts, participating in their personal capacity, came from 21 different countries. The general rapporteur had the task of summarizing the three days of background and issue paper presentations, plenary discussions and small group work. The report that follows is a summary of the important findings, conclusions and recommendations.
Finally, I wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to all who contributed to this Expert Consultation. Each person who gave of their valuable time is to be congratulated. In a very short three days, experts came up with a fairly comprehensive strategy for strengthening and expanding rural youth programmes that will have major implications for the way FAO plans and carries out its work in the future. It is hoped that the conclusions and recommendations coming out of the Consultation will likewise provide guidance to governments and rural youth programmes as they work to help young people become productive, contributing and caring citizens of their respective communities, their countries and their world.
Stein W. Bie
Director
Research, Extension and Training Division
