A Light Bulb of Youth In African Development

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How Can Young People Engage With The High Level Political Forum? | The Youth Cafe

Maureen Amuhinda

What is the High Level Political Forum?

The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) is a multi-stakeholder platform engaging all members states in the exchange of experiences in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and associated frameworks, identifying gaps and sharing lessons learned. It is also a forum for rallying further action and solutions to this end by all stakeholders. The HLPF allows for a participatory, transparent and integrated follow-up and review platform at the global level.

The meeting of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2020, convened under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council, will be held from Tuesday, 7 July, to Thursday, 16 July 2020; including the ECOSOC Integration Segment on July 6 and a three-day ministerial meeting of the forum from Tuesday, 14 July, to Thursday, 16 July 2020 at the UNHQ, NY.

The theme will be "Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development " . In particular, it will seek to better contextualize the ability to accelerate progress on SDGs while combating and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘Decade of Action’ is meant to galvine the global community towards activities aimed at fulfilling commitments made as part of the 2030 Agenda.

In the context of the HLPF, The Youth Cafe partners with UN Major Group for Children and Youth as a formal mechanism to facilitate meaningful participation of young people in the implementation, monitoring, follow-up, and review at all levels, and has been working closely with the broader Major Groups and Other Stakeholders Coordination Mechanism .  

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Hundreds of events will take place in the next two weeks. Stay up-to-date by receiving daily coordination emails, as well as substantive information on the HLPF sessions and special announcements of activities. 

All those who sign up using this - LINK - will be added to a 2020 Youth Engagement Group. If you are part of the 2020 HLPF/VNR Focus Group, you will be automatically added.

Join the 2020 Youth Engagement Group Here

Preparatory Sessions for Children & Youth

Despite the online nature of the HLPF, we would like to welcome everyone to a series of child/youth-led and child/youth-focused preparatory meetings on the sidelines of the HLPF. 

These sessions aim to accomplish the following:

  • Provide a space for interaction among members interested in the HLPF

  • Promote capacity building and skill sharing 

  • Facilitate dialogue on global/thematic, regional, and national reviews taking place at the HLPF

  • Identify opportunities to contribute to sustainable development in your communities

Join us for the following sessions by filling out this registration form -

  • Preparatory meeting (Youth Blast!) on Monday 6 July, 8:00 am - 12:00 pm EST

  • Roundtables in all non-English UN languages (Arabic, Chine, French, Russian, & Spanish) - dates/times TBD

  • ‘Virtual cafe’ everyday 7:00 am EST (emails will be sent in case there are any changes) - discussion of substantive aspects of HLPF activities for the day ahead and debrief / reflections from the prior day. 

Register for the Preparatory Sessions Here

Formal Programme of the HLPF

The latest draft programme for the HLPF 2020 can be accessed through this LINK .

Given the virtual format of this year’s HLPF, registration is only required for active participants (namely Lead Discussants, representatives providing contributions from the floor during thematic sessions and representatives asking questions following VNR presentations). All participants can follow the sessions of the HLPF via UN Web TV. We’ll be sharing documents with the HLPF Youth Engagement Group to contribute to note-taking during the sessions, which can then be made available to the broader constituency.

Side Events & Special Sessions

Each day, side events will take place in the morning, lunch time, and evening. We are working on mapping a list of events that may be of interest to the UN MGCY community. The current list of events can be found at this LINK . It will be continuously updated.

Are you planning to host an activity - an event, webinar, campaign, etc - for the 2020 High Level Political Forum? Fill out our activity form at this LINK ! You can fill it even if your event is in the planning phase. You can host activities anytime from July 1-19. We'll be happy to see how we can support, in particular adding the events to our mapping of HLPF activities and broadcasting it with the larger youth community. Select events will get featured on the UN MGCY website. 

We would also like to invite you to join several side events that UN MGCY is helping organize during the first week of the HLPF:

Decade of Action: Intergenerational and Multi STAKEHOLDER Incidence to Achieve the SDGs in an Era of COVID 19

  • Co-organized by The Millennials Movement, UN MGCY and the LAC Civil Society Engagement Mechanism. 

  • The event will be facilitated through Zoom video conference 

  • Contact us at contacto@themillennialsmovement.org 

A youth-led talk show: Working towards economic inclusion in the decade of action

  • Co-organized by UN Youth Delegates from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Kenya, the Netherlands, Mexico and Sweden; UN MGCY; European Youth Forum  

A New System for a New World: Reality Check and Ways Forward for the post-COVID19 World

  • Co-organized by all constituencies of the UN MGCY 

  • Contact us at info@theyouthcafe.com