Leela Ramdeen

In­ter­na­tion­al Youth Day’s (IYD) theme on Au­gust 12th is: Lo­cal Youth Ac­tions for the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) and Be­yond. The UN states that the theme “high­lights the unique role of youth in trans­lat­ing glob­al am­bi­tions in­to com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven re­al­i­ties. As de­vel­op­ment part­ners work to trans­late and im­ple­ment the glob­al goals with­in spe­cif­ic lo­cal con­texts, align­ing them with com­mu­ni­ty needs while main­tain­ing con­sis­ten­cy with na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments, young peo­ple are crit­i­cal part­ners. They bring cre­ativ­i­ty, in­sight, and deep com­mu­ni­ty ties that help bridge the gap be­tween pol­i­cy and prac­tice. With over 65 per cent of SDG tar­gets linked to lo­cal gov­er­nance, youth en­gage­ment is not a lux­u­ry—it is a ne­ces­si­ty.

“This year’s IYD will al­so un­der­score the es­sen­tial role of lo­cal and re­gion­al gov­ern­ments. Be­ing the clos­est to the com­mu­ni­ties they serve, they are unique­ly po­si­tioned to cre­ate in­clu­sive pol­i­cy en­vi­ron­ments, al­lo­cate re­sources, and es­tab­lish mech­a­nisms for youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in lo­cal plan­ning and de­ci­sion-mak­ing...When lo­cal gov­ern­ments pro­vide spaces for in­no­va­tion, men­tor­ship, and civic en­gage­ment, they not on­ly ac­cel­er­ate SDG im­ple­men­ta­tion but al­so nur­ture fu­ture com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and change­mak­ers...IYD 2025 calls for re­al in­vest­ments in in­clu­sive poli­cies and pro­grammes that lever­age lo­cal youth ac­tions for the SDGs.”

There is no uni­ver­sal­ly agreed in­ter­na­tion­al de­f­i­n­i­tion of the youth age group. Ar­ti­cle 1 of the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child de­fines ‘chil­dren’ as per­sons up to the age of 18.

“For sta­tis­ti­cal pur­pos­es, how­ev­er, the Unit­ed Na­tions—with­out prej­u­dice to any oth­er de­f­i­n­i­tions made by Mem­ber States—de­fines ‘youth’ as those per­sons be­tween the ages of 15 and 24 years...To­day, there are 1.2 bil­lion young peo­ple aged 15 to 24 years, ac­count­ing for 16 per cent of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion” (UN).

T&T’s Na­tion­al Youth Pol­i­cy (2020-2025) de­fines youths as per­sons be­low 35 years of age. Its main goal is: “to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly ac­com­plished, po­lit­i­cal­ly con­scious, cul­tur­al­ly lit­er­ate, eco­nom­i­cal­ly em­pow­ered, so­cial­ly con­nect­ed, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy, healthy young peo­ple; liv­ing in peace­ful, di­verse cir­cum­stances, com­mu­ni­ties and nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ments, and are strate­gi­cal­ly en­gaged as ac­tive cit­i­zens and co-cre­ators of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and sus­tain­able fu­tures.”

When the then min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS), the Ho­n­ourable Fitzger­ald Hinds, pre­sent­ed a state­ment on the Youth Pol­i­cy to Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2021, he stat­ed that “the youth pop­u­la­tion con­sti­tutes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 436,000 young peo­ple (40% of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go).” He right­ly “urged all stake­hold­ers to join his min­istry, MYDNS, and do right by the na­tion’s youth through the im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies guid­ed and un­der­gird­ed by the Na­tion­al Youth Pol­i­cy...we in­tend to leave no youth be­hind.”

The chal­lenge that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have had is at the im­ple­men­ta­tion stage. No mat­ter how well-craft­ed our vi­sion, mis­sion, strat­e­gy, and goals are, un­less we ad­dress is­sues re­lat­ing to the pol­i­cy-im­ple­men­ta­tion-mon­i­tor­ing-eval­u­a­tion gaps, we will, in­deed, be leav­ing many of our youths be­hind. Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, the Ho­n­ourable Phillip Watts, was ap­point­ed af­ter a change of gov­ern­ment last year. I urge him to re­view the Youth Pol­i­cy in light of the chang­ing con­text in which T&T finds it­self.

Dur­ing his vis­it to the min­istry on May 5th, 2025, he said: “I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing with this team. Let’s work to­geth­er to get the job done and make this the best per­form­ing min­istry.”

By now, he must re­alise that his min­istry can­not achieve its goals on its own. We need a whole-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach to ad­dress and meet the needs of our na­tion’s youths. The con­tri­bu­tion of every lev­el of gov­ern­ment, every or­gan­i­sa­tion, and every com­mu­ni­ty, is es­sen­tial if we are to do right by our youths.

In or­der to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment in­clu­sive poli­cies and pro­grammes, we must de­vel­op mech­a­nisms to re­al­ly lis­ten to what our youths have to say and in­clude them at every stage of de­vel­op­ment. Their views/ex­per­tise mat­ter. Too of­ten, their as­pi­ra­tions are af­fect­ed by, for ex­am­ple, crime and vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing drugs, gun cul­ture, bul­ly­ing and oth­er forms of abuse; fail­ing ed­u­ca­tion and health­care sys­tems; ex­ploita­tion; poor hous­ing, in­ad­e­quate par­ent­ing/break­down in fam­i­ly life, pover­ty and so­cial ex­clu­sion, poor nu­tri­tion, harsh so­cio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate, un­em­ploy­ment, lack of suf­fi­cient men­tors and role mod­els.

In spite of these and oth­er chal­lenges, T&T is blessed with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of tal­ent­ed, cre­ative, in­no­v­a­tive youths with lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Sad­ly, a num­ber of them are choos­ing to leave “sweet T&T” for for­eign shores seek­ing bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Let’s in­vest in our youths, un­leash their po­ten­tial, em­pow­er them and in­volve them in na­tion-build­ing.