Shahrazan Isa is a United Nations Youth Representative for Airline Ambassadors and represented us at the International Young Leaders Assembly (IYLA) which took place at United Nations headquarters in New York, on August 18,2015

Currently there are 1.8 billion young people around the world. This is the largest number of youth in given history. Moreover, it is crucial for youth to participate in the decisions of politics, economic affairs, cultural ideas and much more social activities. Young people are today’s leaders and have to be involved in making a better tomorrow.

It is apparent that education of young people is increasing however according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), “young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and almost 73 million youth worldwide are looking for work.”  Multiple speakers have brought up the frustration and lack of opportunity economically, socially and politically. This augments youth vulnerability  and leads to many to turn in desperation  to violent organizations. As speaker Poonam Ahluwalia, mentioned how she was concerned about the lack of jobs available for youth. Ahluwalia founded the organization titled YES, which works to incorporate young people into the job market.

Dr. Su Thye, founder of the Global Peace foundation, gave his speech on leadership and had the audience think of leadership and the qualities of what makes a leader. Dr. Su Thye said “All of us aspire to be somebody and it is what motivates us to do things in life.” And he asked the audience a series of questions to get them to think of why we want to become leaders and what is the greater purpose of leadership. Thye goes on to explain what make a bad leader is one who focuses on their self-interest and not of the greater good of humanity. In contrast, good leaders strive for a purpose that is bigger than oneself. Good leaders seek to not only benefit the community but also for the nation and the global community this is what is a moral leader. Thye explained how there is a huge deficit of moral leaders.

Rosemary Odinga, director of Odinga foundation spoke about how young people around the world do not have an identity in the eyes of their government. Odinga explains how the belonging is “where you are accountable for your country and your country is accountable for you.” Odinga explains how the engagement of young people helped make a difference like the Arab Spring started from young people voicing their frustration and in the United States young people helped elect the first African American president. Although young people are making a difference in many countries around the world the youth are discounted from social, political and economic affairs. In Kenya the youth make up 75% of the population, yet  they battle with unemployment,  deprived access to healthcare, lack business opportunities and hardly have access to financial services. The cause of these battles youth are facing in Kenya and many other parts of the globe is simply because identity cards for youth are non existent. Not having papers to identify you as a person symbolizes illegitimacy in the government’s eyes. By the youth having a lack of belonging makes them vulnerable to groups like Isis, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda and Al Shabab. Odinga has dedicated the past 7 years to help youth in Kenya gain legitimacy by helping them get identity cards and birth certificates. Odinga explains how an identity card is a necessity for governments to implement border control, disaster aid and voting. Odinga works with the organization called “yes youth can my ID my life campaign”, which helps youth obtained IDs and other forms of identification.