The four UK Youth G20 (Y20) representatives join the Indonesian Youth Diplomacy (IYD) and nearly 20 other global youth organisations in calling on the G20 Leaders to uphold meaningful multilateralism, rights-based consensus-building, and global cooperation ahead of the 2022 G20 Leaders Summit. The Summit will take place from Tuesday 15 November to Wednesday 16 November in Bali, Indonesia.
In an official statement, the 2022 Y20 outlined that such global cooperation is crucial to yield effective action on securing an equitable future resilient to climate and ecological crises, ensuring sustainable employment opportunities, and creating a just, inclusive, and people-centred digitally transformed society for all.
The four UK delegates, selected by the Future Leaders Network (FLN) after a competitive application process, undertook intense negotiations over several months to reach a list of demands for world leaders to consider at their forthcoming G20 Summit. These policy recommendations, formalised in the Y20 communiqué, were negotiated by the following delegates within four policy areas:
Mohammad Karim - Diversity and Inclusion
Micheala Chan – Sustainable and Liveable Planet
Shaun Odili – Youth Employment
Eleri Kirkpatrick-Lorente – Digital Transformation
The Y20 places responsibility onto the G20, as some of the world’s largest economies, to set an ambitious global policy agenda and deliver on outcomes which support all countries to realise a socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable future.
Within the Y20 Communiqué, there is a push to G20 Leaders to ensure that all technologies are being adapted for global challenges - including climate change adaptation and mitigation, digital transformation of economies and governments, and epidemic preparedness and response - are open source and complemented by greater technology transfer and knowledge exchange. Similarly, the Y20 calls for the establishment of a multi-stakeholder G20 digital wellbeing charter by 2023 to minimise negative outcomes from digitization. Such collaborations can only be accomplished via global fora such as the G20, further highlighting the need for G20 Leaders to engage in meaningful multilateralism.
The G20’s action - and inaction - have immense impacts and global reverberations, particularly on countries and communities that are not members of the forum.
Finally, the UK Y20 representatives join in calling on the G20 Leaders to incorporate youth participation across all decision-making processes at all levels on all issues, so as to create a blueprint for a sustainable, livable, and equitable future.