ASPBAE at the 2025 APFSD Youth Forum

19-21 February 2025

Youth across the Asia Pacific region gathered in Bangkok, Thailand and online on 19-21 February 2025 for the “Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) Youth Forum.”

Organized ahead of the 12th APFSD, the APFSD Youth Forum aims to “ensure young people’s voices, their realities, and perspectives are meaningfully included in setting, transforming, and implementing the regional agenda on sustainable development, with specific reference to the intergovernmental APFSD and HLPF 2025.” It also provided an opportunity for youth to take stock of the progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the youth perspective, share youth-led innovations to promote good health and well-being, gender equality, and climate action, and develop the outcome document- the Regional Youth Call to Action.

Over the course of three days, youth participants had a spirited sharing of experiences, knowledge, and expertise. ASPBAE’s Advocacy and Youth Engagement Officer, Raffiela Lae Santiago, participated in the APFSD Youth Forum in person, while youth representatives of ASPBAE member, Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE) Bangladesh, participated online, carrying youth recommendations and highlighting the important interlinkages between SDG 4 on quality education and lifelong learning with the SDGs up for review this year.

The main sessions of the first and second days of the Forum brought together excellent panels of speakers from relevant UN agencies, including UNESCAP, UNESCO, UN Women, UNDP, the academia, and CSOs to engage in discussion on the progress, gaps, and recommendations on urgent actions to ensure youth’s health and well-being (Goal 3), including Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), promote decent work and economic growth (Goal 8) of youth, advance gender equality (Goal 5) and human rights, and combat climate change impacts and protect life below water (Goals 13 and 14), focusing on the intersectional thematic areas of Goals under review.

Speakers highlighted the social determinants, including non-health factors, that drive good health and bad health of youth. Challenges remain in terms of persistent health inequities, unhealthy lifestyles, and environmental health threats. Limited access to health and education programs also persist. Investments must be made to protect the health of youth, as well as the quality of education spaces to ensure these promote good health and well-being and reinforce healthy behaviors.

Gender inequalities continue to exacerbate the vulnerabilities faced by women and girls. Barriers to access education, health care, including sexual and reproductive health, information and services, and justice, as well as decent work and livelihoods, remain prevalent. Child, early, and forced marriages are widespread in the region. Gender-based violence, including sexual violence and gender-based discrimination as well as harmful gender-based discriminatory practices, are too common. Women and girls are and will be disproportionately affected by the adverse effects of the climate crisis. And they carry an unfair burden of unpaid domestic and care work.

Addressing these challenges requires adopting and implementing National Action Plans to end violence against women and girls, putting in place women-friendly and youth-friendly spaces, improving access to legal protection for women and girls, quality psychosocial support, and services, funding women’s rights organizations, and transforming belief systems and behaviors in terms of gender and other intersecting identities through education.

Youth unemployment rates in the Asia Pacific region are comparably high. The region is home to more than half of all unemployed youths. The transition from education to the labour market is a challenge for young people. They face multiple barriers to securing decent employment and opportunities, including the significant skills gap, skills shortages, and skills mismatch. It is thus critical to develop and implement good employment policies for young people, strengthen the institutions that support youth through their labor market transitions, and provide targeted skills and livelihood training and development. Governments must also ensure shock-sensitive social protection for youth, especially those from marginalized backgrounds.

Speakers also touched upon youth engagement in climate action, which is deemed not only legitimate, but also paying off in terms of mitigation, adaptation, and climate financing. However, the unwavering commitment of young people to climate action stands in stark contrast to the disheartening lack of political will at higher levels. While youth’s experiences, innovative ideas, and solutions should be scaled up and replicated, the responsibility to take urgent climate actions to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to the climate emergency should not rest solely and entirely on the shoulders of youth. Governments and people in power and in authority should play their part in driving and sustaining climate action, including marine conservation, scaling up actions on the ocean and climate nexus, strengthening the capacities of young people to mobilize local actions and create ripple effects in their own communities, supporting and investing in youth-led solutions, and facilitating the changes needed to enable youth take part in the decision-making for medium- and long-term implementation.

Discussions also underscored the role of youth as leaders, advocates, communicators, translators, and activists, and offered strategies in engaging the youth, strengthening their capacities, and amplifying their voices. Youth voices and experiences must be at the center in the development of policies and programs related to priority youth concerns, especially on health, education and lifelong learning, decent work and employment, and climate action, including marine conservation and protection.

The main sessions were followed by parallel sessions featuring Best Practice Forum (BPF) and workshops, all designed and led by young people. In the BPFs, young people had the space to share evidence and best practices relevant to the five SDGs under review, presenting their youth-led research, programmes, projects, and innovative methodologies. The Forum also curated an Innovation Exhibition, which featured youth-led solutions and innovations related to Goals 3, 5, 8, and 14.

Twenty-two (22) Country Calls to Action were developed and fed into the APFSD Youth Forum outcome document, the Regional APFSD Youth Call to Action. This Call to Action put forward youth recommendations and demands for sustainable, inclusive, and evidence-based solutions, with a focus on the SDGs under review this year. Some of the key points related to education are:

✅Investing in and improving access to flexible learning strategies for quality formal and non-formal education, technical and vocational education and training, and skills development for decent work and livelihood.
✅Align education with the life skills needed by young people to thrive and address the world’s challenges, and are also responsive to market demands by strengthening Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programs through collaboration with the industries sector.
✅Collaborating with ministries of education and health across the region to mandate Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) as part of the national curriculum. Partnering with educators, health experts, community leaders, and youth to develop a comprehensive curriculum that is evidence-based and upholding bodily autonomy and dignity.
✅Eliminating all discriminatory laws and policies that allows the exploitation of women, girls, and other groups of vulnerable people under various contexts, such as child marriage, FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), violence against women and girls, among others.
✅Implementing structured monitoring systems with key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess and improve health education programs.

Highlights of the document were shared in an APFSD side event on “APFSD Youth Forum Regional Call to Action 2025: Youth at the forefront reviewing 10 years of Agenda 2030 implementation and crafting sustainable, resilient and innovative actionable solutions for good health and well-being and gender equality,” held on 28 February 2025. The APFSD Youth Forum representatives also met their national delegation and shared the collective Regional Youth Call to Action. The Call to Action is envisaged to contribute to national-level follow-up and review processes with governments in respective countries in the region.

Click here to access the 2025 APFSD Regional Youth Call to Action:
https://arrow.org.my/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/APFSD-Youth-Forum-2025-Call-to-Action.pdf

Click here to access the APFSD Youth Forum video recordings:
Day 1 Keynote- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18RkQUFeGm/
Day 1 Plenary 1- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GWvtSMkAh/
Day 1 Plenary 2- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1A6YRHrAUF/
Day 2- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BfJfhcfZq/
Day 2 Plenary 3- https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19rdwUUmAz/