Your Excellency Othman Almoamar, Chair Y20
Young Ladies and Gentlemen attending the Y20,
I am honored to be here today at the Y20 Youth Summit. As you know, the Y20 is one of the most influential forums for young leaders globally. Youth leadership is especially important during this challenging time, with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of that pandemic on our society’s through sickness and death caused by the virus, and as well through the near shut down of our societies and the global economy.
For young people this has been especially trying time with the loss of education, loss of job opportunities, and inability to come together with friends, your families and the communities.
I am here today to encourage you and your families to stay safe and healthy – follow the guidelines laid out by the World Health Organization, and assure that you maintain your distance, wear masks and wash your hands.
I am also here to today with a message of hope for the future – and that hopes rests in large part with you. UN-Habitat, the UN organization I head up, has seen the amazing courage and leadership by community and many times young people. In Kenya and East Africa we have seen young men and women who live in poverty, step up and work to protect their community. Since the start of the pandemic, for example, young people were able to provide an immediate emergency community health response, setting up COVID-19 prevention stations, and by International Youth Day on August 12th, they had washed 2,000,000 pairs of hands, given out over 10,000 free masks and provided critical public health information through innovative ways such as murals. Their work has clearly shown that young people are leaders not only of tomorrow, but as well today.
In my experience working with young people both when I was Mayor of Penang, Malaysia and now as Executive Director of UN-Habitat, I have learned that youth not only are able to act quickly, but you are also able to plan for a better future. I commend you that this meeting is focused on how we can work towards a more sustainable recovery.
Through your lifestyle, you can and are making conscious choices to leave behind a consumption-focused lifestyle and adopting a lifestyle that sustains our communities, our cities, our countries and the world.
My agency is in charge of urban sustainability – this means we work with local and national governments, other international agencies, and most importantly the community and people like yourselves to bring about sustainable cities and towns. Currently over 50% of the world population live in cities. The now 1.2 billion people young people are the largest cohort of youth to have ever existed, and the vast majority of them live in cities.
Urban is OUR future. Urban is YOUR future. Adults and youth and seniors, men and women, from all walks of life, must come together to assure that the new normal is an equitable and fair normal, where everyone has access to a decent job, good education, medical care and a healthy urban environment. I call on you to work with UN-Habitat and the rest of the UN system to make this dream a reality. One small step is to envision a better normal – you can do this through our joint campaign with Foundation Botnar – the Future Cities Challenge. Please participate in this campaign and tell us what you think the better normal is of cities and towns globally, where no one is left behind, and everyone has a chance to lead a healthy and happy life. Young people – we support you. Let us work together.
www.futurecitieschallenge.org
