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The battle for the recognition of youth rights in Zimbabwe
Now Zimbabwe Trust
October 08, 2011

A difficult transition of youth development from patronage and dependency to assuming future leadership roles and, role in development through active and conscious participation prompted the writing of this paper. As Now Zimbabwe Trust, we were motivated by deep frustration over continued youth vulnerability and marginalization enmeshed by inadequacies of accurate information on youth development and compelling ambition to add some diversity to existing accounts of the youth development process in Zimbabwe. Youth development, activism and advocacy has not been smooth up to this day due to quite a number of mitigating factors ranging from political disturbances, lack of political will and commitment on the part of policy makers in addressing the plight of young people, repressive laws, inadequate funding, victimizations, unlawful arrest, only to mention but a few. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that young people are the future and, more interestingly, the majority yet they are left out of mainstream development processes such as policy formulation which affects their own future.

According to facts and statistics on development, about 73% of the population is made up young people, unemployment rate is above 81%, HIV and AIDS prevalence rate 14, 2%, 48% of women in Zimbabwe (15-24yrs) are living with HIV, 85% are in informal employment and 83% living on less than USD2 a day (majority living below poverty datum line of USD509 per month). Such facts evidently indicate how youth rights are being denied on a massive scale. It is however unfortunate that there is no disaggregated data on youth development and this has led to youth vulnerability. Youth vulnerability may go unchecked if the need for research which goes beyond pilot projects to cross sectional surveys and creative research is not invested in so as to come up with a responsive framework to foster youth rights to development. Further to this Zimbabwe crafted and adopted a national youth policy in 2004. However this policy is highly defective and flawed in that it was plunged into policy by the youth ministry then without proper consultation and involvement of young people in its formulation.

Research has proven that youth in Zimbabwe seem to be unfamiliar with the current policy and this has seriously affected its influence on youth development, empowerment, and protection of youth rights, interests and participation. Up to date the youth policy has not been revisited regardless of the urgent need to do so and attempts by youth and youth organizations in advocacy to have it revisited. This directly leads us to the fact that youth rights are being grossly violated under the pretext of patronage, negligence and lack of political will. Validation during field work indicated that it is not that the youth are incapable but rather their rights are being denied on a massive scale. The inclusive government has not been able to adequately address the plight of the youth due to discrepancies on strategy and how to go about in unpacking the youth bag of challenges. Instead the GNU has focused on economic development which tends to benefit the business community and not national development which benefits the majority who are the youth. With only four years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there is greater need to strengthen youth participation and inclusion in mainstream development work to expedite the speedy realization of the MDGs.

Ignoring us in policies, programs, and resource allocation is a main contributing reason to youth vulnerability, poverty, further spread of HIV and AIDS and marginalization. This culminates in risky behaviors, exploitation as tools of political violence, sexual abuse, drug abuse, crime and economic migration. This coupled with lack of basic amenities such as access to clean water, sanitation, basic health care and meeting daily needs have led the youth to be more vulnerable, insecure about the future, traumatized and hopeless. It thus suffices to say that youth rights are greatly being overlooked, yet as young people we are the future. Little has been done to address the unpleasant realities faced by young people which proves to be a futile recipe for the future, young people have the right to be trained as future leaders and empowered.

It is unquestionable to note with great concern that youth in Zimbabwe form a vulnerable and marginalized group owing to a myriad of factors. Due to the level of human and societal development in Zimbabwe, it has been difficult to locate a definite age-group for the youth. While many developed and developing countries have set 25 years as their cut-off age for youth, the current youth policy of Zimbabwe recognizes youth as people from 10 -30 years of age. This is coupled with lack of disaggregated data on youth development by gender, age and subgroup including ages of 10-14 and 15-24 years. Youth are mentioned in many government policies but do not participate and are overlooked mainly as a result of the inadequacy of the youth policy to foster youth participation. Young people bear a disproportionate burden of the country's political and economic woes thus leaving them vulnerable. The Zimbabwe Youth Council has not been able to adequately advise government on the real position of youth development as it is supposed to as the main coordinating youth body on behalf of youth organizations and associations.

The National Youth Policy has failed to protect youth rights and interests. The major question is; what is our future then when uncertainties, vulnerability, grappling in social poverty, dependency, insecurity, violence, fear, hopelessness have become our daily bread. It will be salutary to applaud the position of youth organizations, activists and supporters in their endeavors of embettering lives of young people in the battle for the recognition of youth rights in Zimbabwe. Such endeavors has not been easy and I believe now is the time for coherence, solidarity, mutual understanding and development cooperation embracing lessons learned from the best practices for a sustainable youth development where youth rights are recognized and young people are at the centre of their own development. Youth across Zimbabwe strongly believe that now is the time to demand their rights and have the right to be heard as we go towards the end of the International year of the youth, what remains is the battle for the recognition of youth rights.

Now Zimbabwe Trust strongly believes in the recognition of youth rights, we reaffirm our belief in the humanitarian imperative and its primacy. Young men and women have the right to respect of their dignity, to the acknowledgement of their equal human capacities, including the capacity to make choices; to the same opportunities to act on those choices; and to the same level of power to shape the outcome of their actions as enshrined in the Humanitarian Charter. NZIT has learnt lessons from the best practices in development work through interaction with the youth and creative research during validation of literature on youth development in Zimbabwe.

It is therefore imperative to revise, implement and evaluate the Zimbabwe National Youth Policy through full participation of young people with expertise in HIV/AIDS, poverty, education and invest adequate political and economic support from government, intergovernmental and non-governmental institutions active in Zimbabwe. Governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental sectors must cultivate opportunities for more political advocacy and capacity building for young people in order to recognize youth rights and move towards a sustainable youth development process which is key to national development.

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