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- Advisory Council on Youth meeting
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Advisory Council on Youth meeting |
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Dear YEE Friends and Allies!
As long as my impressions and feelings about the Advisory Council on Youth meeting are yet fresh, let me take advantage of this opportunity to share some of them with you so that you could have an insight in what was happening in the heart of the European youth life of the Council of Europe - in the Youth Center of Budapest, on 17-19 October, 2011. The Youth sector of the Council of Europe is co-managed by two bodies. All the decisions are made jointly by representatives of ministries of youth affairs of the CoE member states (the structure holds the name of Steering Committee on Youth or shortly from French CDEJ) and representatives of 30 youth organizations and national youth councils. Grouped together, they are referred to as Advisory Council on Youth. When meeting together, the structure is called Joint Council on Youth. The two bodies are used to hold two meetings per year where they discuss the main issues of the youth sector. One is hold in separate settings and a second one together.The meeting I attended was sort of special one due to the circumstance that it was the last meeting of the current mandate of the AC on Youth. Hence, the agenda of the meeting was full of items of significant importance such as: 1) Reform of the CoE and place of co-management system in it; 2) Future of the European Youth Foundation; 3) Opinion of the Joint Council on Youth on Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1978 (2011) "Towards a European framework convention on youth rights" 4) State of the flagship projects of the CoE; 5) Evaluation of the current mandate and training of the next mandate of the AC on Youth. I will start with the reform of the CoE. The reform was officially completed on October 1, with the new structure of the CoE coming into force. However, there exists a range of issues that follow the reform and shall be worked on. Among them the most significant one from the youth perspective is the issue of co-management. Even if the model has repeatedly received support from high officials of various levels, including the current CoE Secretary General Thobjorn Jagland, it is still endangered. Indeed only one meeting has been secured in the budget while the second one is to take place once enough financial resources are available in a given period of time. Thus the last decision of the current mandate in regard to this issue was to address member states' permanent representatives in Strasbourg, on behalf of both Joint Council as a whole and separate Youth Councils as youth representatives in their countries to ask them to find a solution for securing two annual meetings. Hopefully, those permanent representatives will react positively upon the request that would be a symbolical achievement of the AC on Youth of the current mandate. Quite much time was devoted to the issue of the reform of the European Youth Foundation. The document which laid in the basis of debate was "Scenario" of the EYF further structure worked out by the Programming Committee (Programming Committee - PC - is a structure within the CoE in charge of assessment of applications received by the European Youth Foundation).
One of the initial priorities the AC on Youth agreed to work on was youth rights. This is easily explained through the fact that on 30 members of AC on Youth 20 are coming from the European Youth Forum whose main priority has always been youth rights. The current mandate of the AC on Youth was an initiator and active actor in carrying out several flagship projects, including Youth Peace Ambassadors, Enter! Project, and recently launched project holding the name "Online Human Rights Defenders". The progress reports on all the mentioned projects have been presented by corresponding members of the Secretariat in charge of their implementation. More information may be found on the CoE web-site http://www.coe.int/youth. I would strike a balance of what has been told by saying that personally for me it has been a priceless life experience to be a part of both the team of 30 young motivated people who are putting all the possible efforts to make life of the European Youth better and of course a part of unique system of co-management that has not been applied nowhere except the CoE. Having attended 4 meetings of the Joint Council on youth and taking immediate part in discussions on high-priority issues of the youth sector of the Council of Europe I have made it sure for myself that the system works efficiently and that the voice of the European Youth is heard on the highest political level. I do hope it will be the case in the future. Kyrylo Ivliev, External Relations Officer |
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