The Fourth Global Youth Employment Summit (YES) Comes to an End
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Alexandria—
On Saturday, 27 September 2008, the Fourth Global Youth Employment Summit (YES), held in Baku, Azerbaijan, 24-27 September 2008, came to an end. HE Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt; and Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria; along with a delegation from the Library of Alexandria, participated in the Summit.
Around 500 participants from 70 countries, adopted the Summit’s Declaration, emphasizing the need to strengthen the role of youth within their communities, encouraging their contributions to the development process, and stressing the role of youth in achieving sustainable development.
The Baku Summit 2008 Declaration reaffirmed the message of the previous Youth Employment Summits, and stressed the necessity of reducing unemployment rates, through the empowerment of young people, in addition to improving the quality of their education amidst the challenges facing the world today.
HE Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt had inaugurated the Summit, where she spoke about the great challenges imposed by globalization. She called for strengthening the capacities of young people and promoting their skills to enable them enter the labor market. She maintained that a large segment of people still suffer from poverty, social and economic marginalization, and therefore there is a dire need to develop specific strategies to combat poverty as a priority for all nations.
In a lecture held within the fringe lines of the Summit, Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, had spoken of the problems facing communities, including: financial crises; poverty; hunger; lack of information and communication technology; in addition to the problems facing the environment, such as: climate change; air and water pollution; deforestation and desertification; and random fishing. Dr. Serageldin called upon participants and concerned officials to listen to the visions of youth and make use of them and their energy as much as possible.