Proactive policies needed for youth, says report

The government of Pakistan needs to be more proactive in developing policies aimed at the country’s youth if they are to have a brighter future, a new study launched on Thursday said. "Adolescents and Youth in Pakistan 2001-02 (AYP), A Nationally Representative Survey", was compiled by the Population Council, a New York-based research organisation, which spent almost four years preparing the first ever documentation of Pakistan's younger generation. A 2001 government statistic counts approximately 25 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 – the largest number in the country’s history. "We thought the programme should be complex enough and diverse enough so it does address different segments of youth," the Council’s country director, Dr. Zeba Sathar told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. "Apart from the need for prioritising education for the young, the AYP focuses on employment, marriage and family initiation," said the Council’s director for West Asia and North Africa, Dr. Barbara Ibrahim, during the launch. "Some youth issues are universal – for example, the generation gap," she added. The Population Council's AYP was developed to improve understanding of young people so that the government, donors, and NGOs can develop appropriate policies and programmes. Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, invited to preside over the launch ceremony, and whose incisive comments preface the report, said he thought young people "are, arguably, the best resource the country has." The youth of today would be best utilised if they had access to better education, he added. Some 8,000 youngsters and over 6,000 adults country-wide were interviewed for the study. "During the survey, we found that only about 39 percent of adolescent girls go to school," Sathar said. However, she said the survey also identified that the gap between puberty and marriage was widening - a positive sign in a largely rural society where it is considered customary for young girls to be wed as soon as they reach the age of puberty. The report said fewer of the youngest adolescents were bearing children; only five percent aged 15 and eight percent aged 16 reported being pregnant or had already been mothers. The highest level of adolescent pregnancy and motherhood was found in Balochistan province and the lowest was in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), the report said. "Rural adolescents were more than twice as likely to be pregnant than those in urban areas," it said. Finance Minister Aziz said he wanted to see the social gap reduced. "We have to improve our human capital," he said. "But the government alone can't do it - we need the world of NGOs, we need the world of civil society, we need the world of philanthropy to help us achieve this goal. He said he would like to see the report's outcomes influence future government policies geared towards the youth. "We are already witnessing a positive generational change in education," Aziz added. "But our social values must change, too."