Without youth any development agenda would not work because over 50% of the population is under 25 year globally. Young people can play as assets and problem solvers in development. It is important to bring the voices of youth to policy makers, and to work with young people as part of a sustainable network based approach.

Young people indeed have fewer opportunities, including youth living with poverty, conflict and those live far from global decision makers who also are able to have their voices heard on the post 2015 development agenda.

Around 1.8 billion young people worldwide are at risk of having their sexual and reproductive rights ignored.

As the MDGs comes to a close most of the countries have made minimal progress in the achievement of the targets under each of the 8 goals. Most of the development agenda talks about equality, education, health facilities, sustainable livelihood, and poverty elimination for all citizens but in fact the core value of population “Youth” are missing in many agenda.

Youth have the right to make decisions about our own health, body, sexuality and reproductive life without fear, coercion or discrimination. But all over the world, people are punished – by the state, medical professionals, their own families – for making these decisions, or prevented from making them at all.

Globally, youth are deprived of education, health services, and under poverty. Also new HIV infection is growing among Young people; unwanted pregnancies are increasing and increasing unsafe abortion leading to speed up maternal mortality rate globally. This is because young are not counted in development agendas. If youth are not going to be involved in post 2015 development agenda then the lack of opportunities, the debts, crises, wars, conflicts, band aid solutions, the missteps, the unreached targets and MDGs that are not achieved will be inherited.

Youth do not only talk about socio economic issues but also refer to environment and its conservation for sustainable livelihood for the future. Involving youth in the post 2015 development agenda will give the world new ways, ideas with its creativity to create amazing projects that lead to more involved and informed programs and the topics that matter to youth. Youth have the capacity to mobilize more people than ever before through social media channels, thus involving more youth than previous generations. Even though this reach is still not wide enough to truly involve enough youth to proportionately have a youth voice in what future it is we want to inherit. Therefore youth participation in higher level policy planning for sustainable development is necessary. Youth are expert in themselves. Their needs and demands could not be understood by any other people rather than themselves. Involving Young people in local, national and international platform with adults will initiate to work together and understand the lacking agenda for development. So, Young people have great contribution on Post 2015 development agendas to achieve the unmet targets regarding all eight goals of MDGs.

First published on Kumari: A Feminist