FAO has been a member of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (IANYD) since 2012. The Network brings together UN entities whose work is relevant to youth issues and it advocates for, supports and reviews progress on the implementation of UN Resolutions, Conventions and other internationally agreed development goals that are youth-related.

An important activity of the IANYD has been to develop the UN System-wide Action Plan on Youth (Youth-SWAP), which provides guidance to the UN system as a whole and serves as a roadmap for its work on youth development. It also promotes programmes undertaken jointly by UN entities and highlights successful initiatives in order to encourage future partnerships.

Based on the UN Secretary General's Five-year Action Agenda, the Youth-SWAP focuses on the following areas of work:

• Employment and entrepreneurship, to ensure greater opportunities for youth to secure decent work and incomes over their life-cycle.
• Protection of rights and civic engagement, to enable young people’s participation in all aspects of their development.
• Political inclusion of young people in decision-making processes at local, national, regional and international levels. 
• Education, including comprehensive sexuality education, to ensure that young people are actively learning in formal or non-formal education systems on an inclusive, equitable and universal basis.
• Health issues, to ensure that young people enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health on an inclusive, equitable and universal basis.