Youth

The General Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions on youth, recognizing that young people are both a major resource for development and key agents for social change, economic development and technological innovation.

In 1985, the United Nations proclaimed the International Youth Year: Participation, Development, Peace, resolution A/RES/39/22, in order to focus attention on concern for and relating to youth.

The United Nations recognizes the profound importance of the direct participation of youth in shaping the future of mankind. It supports activities to strengthen policy-making and programme planning capacities for youth and to encourage research, training, data collection, and evaluation of technical information on youth issues.

World Programme of Action for Youth

The World Programme of Action for Youth to the Year 2000 and Beyond (A/RES/50/81) was adopted in 1995 to draw attention to the important role young people play in society. It identified ten priorities:

1. Education
2. Employment
3. Hunger and poverty
4. Health
5. Environment
6. Drug abuse
7. Juvenile delinquency
8. Leisure time activities
9. Girls and young women
10. The full and effective participation of youth in the life of society and in decision-making.

It urged government ministers and ministers responsible for youth and leaders of non-governmental youth organizations to meet on a regular basis at global youth conferences, the so called World Youth Forum.

UN Focal Point on Youth

The UN Focal Point on Youth is part of the Social Integration Branch, which falls within the Division for Social Policy and Development (DSPD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in the United Nations Secretariat. Its mandate is based on the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY).

• Global Issues:
  • Youth 
  • Child and youth safety
• UN Youth Library. The Secretary-General's reports on youth issues and relevant studies and resolutions.
• The UN World Youth Report in fulltext.
• World Programme of Action for Youth. Background information, document to download and further information on the fifteen fields of action identified by the international community.
• UN System Activities on Youth. List of UN agencies on youth issues.
• SDGs and Social Development Issues. Youth. Illustration of SDGs that deal with youth issues.
• UNRIC Library Backgrounder : YOUTH.

• UN Charter in Swedish | in English
• UN System Chart
• Yearbook of the United Nations
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
• Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
• Statue of the International Court of Justice

• United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
• UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
• ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
• Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
• UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
• Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
  • a list of all documents
  • a comprehensive subject index
  • an index to speeches
  • a voting chart of resolutions
• United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.