Crisis! This is what is written on the doormat of the International Year of Cooperatives, officially started by the UN last month. During the International Day of Cooperatives, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon ideally inaugurated the Year. He invited young people to consider the benefits deriving from the creation of cooperatives and other forms of social companies and asked the cooperative movement to collaborate with them in a spirit of dialogue and mutual understanding. After all, “Dialogue and Mutual Understanding” was the theme given by Unesco to the International Year of Youth (IYY) which has just come to an end.
The IYY ended, indeed, on 11 August 2011 and it will be remembered by young people in the world as a period of important transformations for their lives. Maybe it would be useful to reflect on the debate, the documents and the considerations given by youths to the concluding text of the Year, at least in Italy. Through an analysis of some of these elements we would be able to better capitalise the indicators and interpret those interconnected phenomena which are, at the same time, local, European and global. Ban Ki-moon had already remarked that the International Year of Youth represented an important chance to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. He had also asked all countries to strengthen their efforts to include young people in policies, programmes and decision-making processes that benefit their futures and ours.
However, all over the world 40% of youths are unemployed, while many others are underemployed and underpaid. New and old forms of slavery are developing today. It seems that in Italy adults shifted on future the costs of unascertainable and maybe unsustainable processes, which are not analysed from the perspective of generational responsibility. According to Censis, an Italian social study and research institute, 42% of employed people from ages 25 to 34 will retire in about forty years with a pension of less than one thousand euro per month. In other words, these people will have from public pensions an income lower than that they had at the beginning of their career. And such a prediction involves only the luckiest ones, the 4 million youths who today are well integrated into the labour market. There also are one million youths who are unemployed or have atypical contracts and two million youths who do not study and do not work (cf. Censis and Unipol, 2011).
The concluding document of the IYY signed in New York shows the urgent need to develop a strategy against youth unemployment. The idea is that of transforming youths in development instruments. And this is not about money, but about better policies. The proceedings of the General Assembly High Level Meeting on Youth restate the importance of promoting partnerships between young people and organisations, universities, private citizens and the UN system. Another important aspect to reflect on is the need to keep on promoting a culture of dialogue with and among youths so that they can foster development, social inclusion, tolerance and peace. It is also necessary to build partnerships with major stakeholders in order to create a global agenda of development based on youths. Finally, the unsolved problem of young people’s participation is taken into account as well. On this purpose, in the resolution of the Assembly, it is stated that it is fundamental to create concrete opportunities of dialogue, cooperation and information between youths and those who have the power to decide. So, enjoy dialogue and cooperative understanding in this new International Year!
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