By Sulayman Waan
The National Youth Council (NYC) in partnership with United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) on Friday August 30 trained a number of youth in the ongoing country’s reform process; held at PIA, Bakau.
The forum aimed to mobilize feedback from citizens, especially youth on various reform mechanism and development issues in the Gambia for necessary improvement.
This event as well increases people understanding, participation and ownership of the various reform mechanisms in the country. It is part of the youth connekt initiative programme.
Lamin Darboe, executive director of NYC said the ongoing reforms process such as the Truth Reconciliation and Reparation Commission, Constitutional Review Commission, Human Right Commission and the National Security Sector Reform has many things to do with youth.
“These are all important reforms taking place in the country. As NYC, the Gambia Government, UNDP and partners we had discuss and agreed that it’s prudent and timely after the establishment of these reforms mechanism we are able to have a dialogue,” he said.
He added: “This dialogue is intended to ensure the young people will directly feedback to these different mechanisms as to how the reform is affecting us, its importance but also some of the things we appreciated on the reform process,” he said.
Darboe said the dialogue forum would reach to all the administrative regions of the country, adding in every regional forum there would be hundred participants of which 80% would be youth and the other 20% would comprise various stakeholders includes duty bearers and policy makers in the regional level.
ED Darboe noted that this event mean to engage the participants in a peerless section where they would learn about all the ongoing reform process. He added that concerns and misconceptions that some participants may have could be vividly clarified by the facilitators.
“If there is something that isn’t clear to us (participants) about the different reforms; thus today is an opportunity for us to ask the right questions so that they are clarifies,” he told the participants.
Mr. Darboe, a renowned youth technician commended the Gambia Government through the ministry of Youth and Sport, UNDP among other partners who contributed in success of the programme.
Sulayman Marenah, finance officer from UNDP described the event as remarkable and historic. He said youth are highly engage in the transformation of conflict, countering violence and peace building.
However, he was quick to add: “ But yet the youth’s efforts remain largely invisible, unrecognized and even undermine due to lack of adequate participatory and inclusive mechanisms as well as opportunity to partner with decision making bodies.”
Nevertheless, he called on policy makers to develop mechanisms that are meaningful to youth participation and leadership in decision and policy making process from local, national to international level.
