Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS, urges for the necessity to adopt a Palestinian national strategy to elevate with Palestinian youth’s status. The Center assumes that such plan should take into consideration the creative capacity of youth and the fact that Palestinian youth have a profound energy that should be utilized, through appropriate frames, to enable them to express their innovative talents and utilize their skills to serve their community. SHAMS Center stresses the necessity to benefit from youth’s capacity within the efforts to overcome the challenges that the entire Palestinian community faces, whether daily life, economic, social, or cultural.
SHAMS Center stresses that reinstating the role of youth and utilizing their innovative capacities through enhancing voluntary work, is an essential model to benefit from youth’s skills and adapt them to help in fulfilling the community’s needs. Additionally, there is a need to create a community culture that supports youth role and believes in their capacity to contribute within the development process in their community. For that, it is a must to increase focusing on developing youth’s skills and capacity through the needed interventions. Likewise, there is a need to assure the availability of all needed resources and issue the required legislation that enable youth to perform a role within the process of developing the community. SHAMS Center is aware of the necessity to create the appropriate mechanisms to endorse youth’s needs and roles within the various national and local developmental strategies.
SHAMS Center urges for the necessity to recognize youth’s capacity and skills as elements that are capable of contributing to creating change within the community. In this regard, youth should be given the appropriate opportunities to develop their skills and capacity and identify the future vision and objectives for a prosper future of youth that could be reflected positively on achieving sustainability and realizing political, economic, cultural, and social development within the entire community in general.
SHAMS Center emphasizes that there are several determinants limiting youth’s participation and expressing their skills in serving the community. Such determinants are more seen in the poor and marginalized areas. Youth with disability are the most excluded youth segment. Moreover, there is gender discrimination against young women and there is discrimination against youth from minorities. Youth suffer from the instable political circumstances and less educated youth suffer due to the overall situation in the community and the deteriorated circumstances. For that, there is a need to re- integrate all these youth groups within the developmental process and enable them to utilize their energies and capacities in serving the community on equal base with their youth peers; and in the light of the international human rights conventions and treaties that urge for respecting human rights, on one hand, and the basic rights and freedoms and rejects all forms of discrimination, on the other.
The Center asserts that the World Youth Skills Day, celebrated on July 15 annually, according to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution, should be an occasion to highlight Palestinian youth’s challenges and difficulties they are entitled to. Palestinian youth suffer from poverty, unemployment, and the scarcity of work opportunities. Likewise, there are other challenges related to the weakness of the labor market and its misfit to the fields of specialization and skills of youth. In this regard, there is a need to coordinate between all the related parties including universities, government, and private sector in order to equip youth with the skills that facilitate for their enrollment in the labor market.
SHAMS Center demands the international community to fulfill its legal and moral responsibilities toward providing Palestinian youth with the needed international protection. Palestinian youth need to be enabled to access their work opportunities, schools, universities, and other educational facilities. Moreover, the international community should work to ensure Palestinians youth right to freedom of mobility and right to physical safety, in accordance with the international law and international human rights law, as well as, the various related international conventions and treaties.
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