Sunday Times 2
Lanka holds ‘World Youth Skills Day’ event at UN
View(s):UNITED NATIONS — The ‘World Youth Skills Day 2018’ was celebrated for the fourth consecutive year at the United Nations headquarters in New York last week. Organised by the Permanent Missions of Sri Lanka and Portugal, in partnership with the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, ILO and UNESCO, the event was attended by more than 120 participants representing UN member states, UN agencies, youth and civil societies.
From Left: UN Secretary-General’s Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake; Deputy Minister Karunarathna Paranawithana, Sri Lanka’s UN Ambassador Dr. Rohan Perera, Portugal’s UN Ambassador Francisco António Duarte Lopes, ILO Director General Guy Ryder, and UNESCO Director Marie PauleRoudil.
On December 18, 2014, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus, resolution, A/RES/69/145, titled ‘World Youth Skills Day’ spearheaded by Sri Lanka, declaring July 15 as the World Youth Skills Day. Since then, this has been an annual event celebrated at the UN. Held under the theme ‘Sustainability and Innovation’, this year’s event — co-chaired by Permanent Representatives Dr. Rohan Perera of Sri Lanka and Francisco António Duarte Lopes of Portugal — focused on interrelation between exponential technological change and skills development and the actions need to be taken to empower youth to become drivers of a sustainable future.
In his opening remarks, Dr Perera highlighted the pros and cons of the digital world with technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing and big data changing the way people consume, live and work. He highlighted that the challenge is to harness the positives of technological advancement, while minimising the negative of technological unemployment or underemployment.
Miroslav Laják, President of the General Assembly, who delivered the keynote address, noted that youth of today face many new challenges unlike previous generations and that the quality of education available to most youth did not respond to current world trends. He stressed on the importance of including young people in making and implementing policies and investing more in skills and education.
Karunarathna Paranawithana, Deputy Minister of Science, Technology, Research, Skills Development & Vocational Training and Kandyan Heritage, while delivering his address as the Guest Speaker, stated that Sri Lanka places great importance in developing its young people by imparting employable skills through Technical Vocational Education and Training as a key in the economic and social development strategy of the country.
He outlined the many policies and programmes that Sri Lanka had formulated and implemented to promote youth skills development at the national level. Guy Ryder, Director-General of ILO; Jayathma Wickramanayake, UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth and Marie Paule Roudil, Director-UNESCO also delivered remarks at the Opening Session.
The World Youth Skills Day 2018, brought together the voices of Member States of the UN, the UN system, private sector, academia, civil society and youth organizations to discuss how to leverage innovation an demerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning to boost youth employment and implications in skills needs and skills development systems.