Mitzy Gafos

This was a special session, the first of its kind, in which eleven young people from across the globe discussed a range of issues pertinent to young people. Facilitated by Charlize Theron the session included a moderated twitter discussion and engaged the views of young people in the audience.

Discussed range of issues: defining meaningful youth participation, young peoples’; experiences of accessing health services; HIV as a health priority for young people; and design of services for young people Meaningful participation: young people need to be included in the planning, decision making, implementation and evaluation phases of service programming; option to veto services planned for youth but without youth; need to capacitate and fund young people to engage meaningfully and sustainably, avoid tokenism - enlarge the space of civil society voices to hear from the diversity of young people. Services need to be: designed with young people; provided by young people; sex positive and stigma free; meet the diverse needs of the diversity of young people; integrated and holistic SHRH and CSE – including psycho-social support; train parents and teachers as well as youth. First youth forum at this conference; reiterated call of “nothing for us without us”

The young people invited Charlize Theron and Deborah Birx (in audience with young people) to visit their programmes, encouraged the audience to visit the Youth Village, and positioned this as the START of the discussion. They concluded by arguing that programmers needed to ‘make the room bigger’ in order to accommodate more voices.

Resty Nalwanga

What is meant by meaningful youth participation (Challenges faced by young people in accessing HIV & SRHR services) Sharing experience from Amsterdam youth force to break barriers hindering young people getting involved in meetings that benefit their health and integration

Meaningful participation of young people means more than asking their opinion at the beginning of designing of programs. Youth-friendly psychosocial groups and peer support should be funded as they have pulled many young people in for services and empower them. Youth are pillars of the future nothing about us without us. Some of young people don't disclose their HIV status due fear of denial, while many of their peers still do not understand stigma faces by people living with HIV. Supporting meaningful youth participation means addressing several aspects that might influence that participation - financial, spiritual, physical, mental. Towards the end of the session, the moderator asked whether people agree that HIV is no longer a priority and teenage pregnancies should have more focus. Panelists saw too great affects and presence of HIV to deprioritize it and pointed to comprehensive responses required – young people are diverse with diverse needs.

Young people are involved at national and international levels. Ambassador Deborah Brix was interested in the panel and also asked how young people should be involved at local level and who should be engaged – it is at grass-roots where young people are doing much actual work and make a difference. The panel concluded with recommendations to invest more in young people, trust their work, consult young people of all ages without discrimination of their gender diversity when designing guideline, bring in young people at local level, build capacities of young people to lead, be transparent and work with them.