Rural Youth Aged 15-17 - The right season to seed the future
From 25 to 28 October, FAO hosted an Expert Meeting to discuss solutions on how to overcome the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15-17 when accessing decent work in rural areas.
Today, there are more young people than ever – 1.2 billion between the ages of 15 and 24. The vast majority of them live in developing countries (89 percent), especially in rural areas. This age group is heavily dependent on agriculture to provide for their livelihoods and face the myriad challenges of poverty.
At the same time farming populations are ageing worldwide, where older farmers are often less likely to adopt the new technologies needed to sustainably increase agricultural productivity for growing populations. Therefore, agriculture needs young people who can be the drivers for more inclusive and sustainable food systems. Yet, youth in rural areas of developing countries face enormous challenges in accessing: 1) knowledge, information and education; 2) land; 3) finance; 4) decent jobs, including green jobs; 5) markets; and 6) participation in policy dialogue and rural organizations.
Rural youth aged 15–17 deserve special attention in this regard, since this specific life stage represents a pivotal point where youth are deciding the direction of their future including obtainment of future decent work as well as the likelihood of transitioning out of poverty. Nevertheless, it is common for many in this age group to be neither in education, nor in employment or training, fuelling migration out of rural areas. This also represents a particular sensitive age group where in most countries young people are allowed to work at the age of 15, yet they are not legally able to undertake hazardous work as minors.
Moreover, this age group has been both ill-targeted by programmes and policies and fallen through the cracks of both child and youth initiatives. This represents missed opportunities in supporting younger youth in rural areas in building their capacity to seize future decent employment opportunities, be it on the farm or elsewhere in the rural economy. FAO, together with interested partners, aims to address this blind spot, starting by developing and promoting recommendations to help youth of this age group to better prepare and access decent rural youth employment.
Objectives
The Meeting brought together 45 experts, including senior technicians and managers from governments, FAO, ILO, IFAD, OECD, NGOs, research institutions, producer organizations, rural youth organizations, civil society and the private sector. Participants exchanged and discussed knowledge, experiences and good practices in addressing the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15-17 and the promotion of decent employment opportunities among them. In May 2016, FAO pre-engaged potential participants in a well-attended online consultation over a three week period.
Outcome
During the workshop, a long list of themes were discussed throughout over 20 working groups, which included topics such as skills development, access to finance, safe working conditions and much more. Specific problems related to these topics have been properly analysed and detailed recommendations have been proposed, consolidated and made available to the public (see link below).
The objective of these recommendations is to guide the design of policies and interventions by governments, international organizations, private sector, youth organizations and other stakeholders aiming to facilitate skills development and generation of decent rural employment opportunities for youth aged 15-17 in the context of sustainable rural transformations.
These recommendations are meant to inform and help kick-start FAO’s new work programme on rural youth aged 15-17, bringing together the work streams of child labour prevention and youth employment promotion in agriculture.
> Download the Expert Meeting "Rural Youth Aged 15-17": Documented results
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