UN-Backed Youth Summit Pledges Action On Millennium Development Goals
New York, Aug 23 2005 4:00PM
Youth leaders from more than 40 countries participating in the United Nations-sponsored second Pan-African Youth
Leadership Summit in Ifrane, Morocco unanimously agreed today to endorsed sport as an entry point for mobilizing African
youth for practical initiatives aimed at advancing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“The delegates committed to sport as an entry point towards achievement of the MDGs within the framework of the
International Year of Sport and Physical Education, and pledged to work towards a future where Africa controls its
resources and can offer these to aid building a more peaceful, equitable and sustainable world,” Djibril Diallo,
co-chair of the summit and Director of the UN Office of Sport for Development and Peace, said in a statement.
The MDGs are a set of eight targets drawn up at the UN Millennium Summit five years ago to slash a host of
socio-economic ills by 2015, including halving extreme poverty and hunger, cutting child mortality rates by two-thirds,
and achieving universal primary education and access to health services.
Delegates at the Ifrane summit, held 18 to 23 August, called on Governments, the UN system, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups to integrate sport into their development agenda and to dedicate more
resources to “sport for all” initiatives at home and abroad, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a statement.
The also committed to working with their regional chairs, those from other regions and the organizers toward the Global
Youth Leadership Summit at the UN in New York in August 2006.
ENDS