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Development Index

The decision to develop a Youth Development Index (YDI) to measure the performance of the youth development programmes was endorsed by Commonwealth Youth Ministers at their meeting in Malaysia in 1998.

Since then significant effort has been paid to defining the scope, context and application of the YDI as a standard measurement for global youth development.In February 2005 agencies within the United Nations and the World Bank requested the Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP) to spear-head work on the development of the YDI. As a follow up to this request CYP hosted an inter-agency consultation on the YDI in London on 11-12 July 2005. The meeting agreed on a road map to develop the YDI and create a committee to take this area of work forward.

In October 2005, the Sixtieth session of UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (60/2) on policies and programmes involving youth, which requested the United Nations Secretariat in collaboration with other relevant United Nations programmes and other development agencies to establish a broad set of indicators related to youth which governments and other actors may choose to use to monitor the situation of young people in key priority youth development areas.

Agencies within the UN System and the World Bank participated in a meeting in New York in December 2005 that was also attended by international organisations such as the Agence Intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, Commonwealth Secretariat, Council of Europe, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Organizacion Iberoamericano de Juventud.

The Meeting was held to define a set of indicators for the fifteen priority areas identified in the World Programme of Action for Youth that would enable:

• The measurement of youth development
• Comparisons of the progress in and between countries
• Identification of areas that need increased action
• Advocacy for youth development policy and encourage collection of youth related data
• The development of a common Youth Development Index (YDI).

Key elements of the YDI

Work continues on the YDI.  Once completed it will constitute:

• A set of demographic, socio-economic, political and other indicators to be developed in partnership with other UN agencies that address the status of youth.
• It will provide a standardised tool that can measure critical aspects of youth development.
• It will serve as the primary monitoring and evaluation tool of the PAYE.
• It will also serve as the primary monitoring and evaluation tool for CYP’s strategic programme areas.
• Its focus will be on the determined critical areas that lend themselves to statistical and social analytical methods.
• Review and analysis of these areas will provide very good performance information on the status of youth development at human, institutional and national levels.
• It will provide policy-makers with an important instrument that can be useful in shaping the direction of youth development work and policies affecting young people.
• It can be used to assist Youth Ministers and other policy-makers in determining how to allocate scarce resources among competing priorities of youth and other objectives

Next steps

The sixth CYMM held in The Bahamas in May 2006 endorsed the development of the YDI to be used in the first instance to measure progress under the PAYE and CYP’s strategic programme areas. The Ministers also requested the Pan Commonwealth Office, Youth Affairs Division continues to play a lead role in coordinating progress towards the completion of the YDI.

The status is as follows:

• Representatives of participating agencies were asked to submit indicators to the UN Youth Focal Point, DSPD (three to four (3-4) indicators their agency is currently using to collect development data. They should relate to areas outside of the agency’s scope of work. They will identify the numerators and denominators, provide a rationale for collecting such data, and identify the ease and availability of these data and areas where gaps are identified in the process.
• The UN Youth Focal Point will collate the information provided and resubmit it to the group of experts for their comments.
• A draft set of indicators on core youth development priority areas will be produced for consideration of the focal group.  A follow-up expert meeting will be organised for participants in mid 2006 to further discuss the set of indicators which will form part of a report for submission to the UN General Assembly in 2007. The report should be completed by February 2007.

For more information on the Youth Development Index, please contact Rajkumar Bidla, Programme Manager