Speech on Monitoring and Evaluation on Youth Policies in Baku

Talking Notes for presentation by Ahmed Adamu, Chairperson, Commonwealth Youth Council, at the Global Forum on YouthPolicies, Baku, Azerbaijan.

-National Youth Policies are incumbent ingredients for youth empowerments. It allows for effective mainstreaming of youth across all the socio economic issues.
-National Youth Policies should not be an option to any progressive government. young people should engage in advocacy to ensure full implementation of the domains of these policies.
-More than 90% of Commonwealth Countries have National Youth Policies, but only 30% of these countries effectively implement them.
-absence or poor Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mechanisms is one of the causes of poor implementation of the youth policies. Youth policies are like cars, and M&E is is the fuel to drive those car.
-There are two approaches to M&E: one is cooperational and the other is confrontational.
-co-operational approach involves advising and lobbying. This can be through formal/informal meetings, policy discussions and debates.
-Confrontational involves advocacy and activism, which is through pressurising the government, protest, media campaigns, international involvements etc
- The choice of approach depends on circumstances in a country. However, on a general perspective, the cooperational approach should be the first option before considering the confrontational option.
- M&E can only be effective with sufficient indicators, which include indices, statistics or data, which help to track progress or otherwise in terms of youth development
- these data has to be disaggregated and country specific.
-For us to influence policy, we have to have evidence, and these evidence comes from statistics/data.
-who is responsible for M&E? National Youth Council should be supported to do the M&E. Other stakeholders, civil society organisations, youth led organisations have to come to a single platform to do the M&E.
-Commonwealth Youth Council is about to conduct capacity building programmes for National Youth Councils on M&E of youth policies.
-Government have to be accountable to youth policies. There should be an annual youth development evaluations and reports? Where government reports to youths on what it has done in line with implementations of the policy denominators.
-There has to be reward and consequences for implementing and not implementing National Youth policies respectively both locally and internationally.
-Commonwealth Youth Council strongly advocates for stand alone goal for young people in the post 2015 development goals, and this goal will strongly help to ensure proper implementation of youth policies at all levels and to ensure proper inclusion and participation of young people in development and governance.
-National Youth Policies domains has to be reviewed and updated frequently.
- Finally, for all youth policies to work, it has to have 5Cs as mentioned by Prof Howard. Youth Policies have to have clear coverage, capacities, co-ordination, cost as well as clear M&E and implementation plans.
- For National Youth Policies to work, It has to be legislated or pass as a law.
Thank you.