The Quadripartite Working Group on Youth Engagement for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) launched a Youth Manifesto for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High Level-Meeting on AMR, taking place on 26 September 2024.
The Working Group was established in 2023 to inform and guide efforts to raise awareness and include young people in global AMR action by the Quadripartite organizations: WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, UN Environment Programme, and the World Organisation for Animal Health. The launch took place at a hybrid event held at the WHO at the UN Office in New York. It was launched on 14 May 2024, one day before the multi-stakeholder hearing on AMR organized by the President of the General Assembly.
The UNGA will convene a High-Level Meeting on AMR for the second time during its 79th session (UNGA 79) in New York in September 2024. The meeting in September is an important opportunity for world leaders to collectively address the looming threat AMR poses to global health, food security, and achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The Youth Manifesto calls for meaningful youth engagement in policy, advocacy and programme implementation, capacity-building initiatives and mentorship programmes. It aims to enable youth-led action against AMR, including through involving youth in co-creating strategic plans on AMR and supporting youth networks to use the AMR-related information provided by the Quadripartite organizations for producing educational materials and building the capacity of young people.
H.E. François Jackman, Permanent Representative of Barbados to the UN, who is also a co-facilitator for the High-Level Meeting in September, remarked that "the Youth Manifesto is a useful and practical tool for the co-facilitators and everyone else to see what the concerns of youth are. Young people should use this and advocate with the policymakers back home, your friends and networks, so that the negotiators are given right instructions by their countries, based on thorough understanding of the issue."
Werner Obermeyer, Director of WHO at the UN, congratulated the Working Group for the Youth Manifesto and said that "the youth constituency has an added advantage in the way that you mobilize and in the way that you demand to be heard. Young people can drive behaviour change in ways that the diplomatic community cannot. You should use the manifesto to organize yourselves and demand change."
The Youth Manifesto was put together based on a multi-stage consultative process involving a diversity of youth groups from around the world. The Working Group hopes that the manifesto will ensure that youth voices and needs are represented in global decision-making platforms, such as the UNGA High-Level Meeting on AMR. It will also serve to present the priorities among youth networks and stimulate more youth engagement in the AMR response.
