Youth declaration drafting

Thursday 22 August

The day started with regional meetings. Here two people from each region were selected to form a drafting committee for the youth declaration that will go to the main Summit. We are in ‘North America and Western Europe’. The other four regions are Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Each region also had the opportunity to provide ideas and comments on the declaration.

The Woodcraft Folk is a large group within our region. There are maybe five US delegates and a couple from Canada, alongside representatives from Germany, Sweden and Finland. Many of the other youth delegates are with official government delegations and will have access to more of the formal UN process in the next weeks than we will.

Working with the youth statement from Bali (the final preparatory meeting for the Summit) as a guide, our region put forward ideas on the lack of timescales or dates in the declaration and we tried to ensure that all of the issues covered in the International Camp declaration were included in a satisfactory way.

The African way of life continues to permeate the Summit. Road journeys are frequently interrupted by the need to get out of the bus to sing and dance and the plenary sessions start with performances from local children or a song from one of the African delegates. We are having some success in fighting back with our Woodcraft Folk frisbee.

For the rest of the day the conference split down into commissions each working on a different theme. We split ourselves amongst them according to our own interests and where we thought we could provide most input. Our representatives were:

• Governance and Youth Participation – Lloyd
• Water and sanitation – Rachel
• Education for SD – Tamsin
• Corporate accountability – Elle
• Financial and ecological debt – Martha
• Social Justice – Rhino
• Finance and Trade – Tilly
• Energy and Climate Change – Matt
• Food security – Kate
• Lobbying and Communications – Richard

Some of these commissions seemed to achieve more than others. Some were frustrating to work with whilst others seemed to work very well. They were all small enough to give everyone involved a real voice.

‘Ecological debt’ is a new concept for many of us – revolving around the idea that whilst the global south is financially in debt to the global north, the north is in ecological debt to the south because of its consumption practises.

The Lobbying and Communications group was also interesting –talking about the way that we can use media and action to change governments minds. It seems that this group is at quite an early stage and panicking to get things sorted – something we feel very at home with and will be involved in over the coming days. We have set up a list of contacts within youth organisations and pressure groups around the world in order to react very quickly on a global basis to things that happen at the summit.

The Commissions reported back to a plenary session. Four out of the sixteen speakers were from Woodcraft and after a heavy procedural session debating whether or not we should have a debate (where have we seen that before!) we decided not to and the working day was over. The work of Commissions will now inform the drafting group for the declaration. We do not envy their task but have lent them our projector to make it easier. We expect to be debating the final form of the declaration tomorrow morning.

Back to the ostrich farm for supper – we're still not sure whether we were eating ostrich or not – and some fantastic live music.

It transpires that Richard's electric shaver was switched on all the way from London and he hasn't brought the charger. We suspect he may be able to use a laptop... watch this space...

Love from the Delegation

Visit this page again tomorrow to hear about the outcomes of the Youth Summit and the opening ceremony of the Global People's Forum. Will Richard get a 'virtual' shave...

• Wednesday 21 August

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