By Anna Halpine
The Interim

The North American Youth Alliance (NAYA) held their first meeting in Washington D.C. at the end of January. Represented were many of the pro-life, pro-family youth leaders from across North America, as well as representatives from local and regional organizations. The meeting heralded the beginning of the NAYA, a network of youth groups and organizations in North America, and the North American branch of the World Youth Alliance.

Begun in March of last year, the World Youth Alliance (WYA) is an affiliation of youth organizations from around the world dedicated to working for the promotion of life, family and youth issues at the international level. To date, this alliance consists of youth organizations in all continents of the world, and has a membership of over 200,000. Regional bodies are currently being set up, to network youth as well as provide a local base and impact. The main focus of the WYA however, is directed at the United Nations conferences and other related conferences, as well as any other international issues.

The World Youth Alliance was begun as a response to the radical Youth Caucus which was set up at the UN during the Cairo +5 negotiations last year. For the first time, a UN sponsored group of youth came to the UN and demanded to be included in the process. Claiming to represent all three billion of the world’s youth, they demanded unlimited sexual licence, mandatory sex education at all levels, including access to information and tools for sexual pleasure, and government promotion of sexual and reproductive rights for young people. Adolescents, defined as those 10 years old and up, were to have access to contraceptives, abortion, and emergency contraception without parental consent. The Youth Caucus demanded that gender facilitators be established in all schools to break down stereotypes, as well as to educate girls and boys on their sexual and reproductive rights. Information about these new rights and services was to be given in a way which would allow them to make their sexual choices in a guilt-free way. In order to reach this goal, they called for the mandatory enlightenment, education, and sensitization of religious leaders to these new rights of young people. Concurrent with these drastic suggestions was a consistent and ferocious attack on parental rights and duties.

What this youth caucus turned out in fact to be was a carefully selected, well-paid and well-funded (by the UN Population Fund) radical youth voice, used as a means by which the West could promote their most radical interpretations of international agreements. Language which the West had to abandon at international conferences turned up in the youth caucus handouts as their amendment suggestions. It was interesting that although the youth caucus were unable to produce press releases and statements without typographical, grammatical, and logical errors, when it came to diplomatic language they produced this so well that Canada, the United States, Norway and the European Union were able to propose it word for word. Instead of bringing in the voices of the world’s youth, the UN had simply created a younger, more radical version of itself to listen to.

Another youth coalition, comprised of about 25 other youth at this conference, was quickly formed in order to assert that these were not the demands of the world’s youth. The vast majority of the world’s youth, the 95 per cent who live in the developing world, are concerned about adequate food and shelter, clean water, basic education and health care and the welfare of their families. They are happy within their families and are not seeking to establish a new world order based on random gender qualifications and a libertarian, sexual lifestyle. But at the Cairo+5 conference these views were dismissed and ignored. It was clear that a strong, united and organized youth voice would need to be present at the UN in order to counter these other “youth” organizations.

It was out of this impromptu coalition that the World Youth Alliance was formed. With the specific mandate to work exclusively at the international level, the WYA is the only full-time, pro-life, pro-family, pro-youth youth organization. The response to the formation of the group has been overwhelming. Support has come from UN ambassadors and negotiators, from national and international parliaments, from national and international organizations, and, most importantly, from youth around the world.

As the WYA continues to grow and expand, it will be continually faced with new options and challenges. Opportunities to speak, opportunities to participate in parliamentary and diplomatic negotiations and deliberations, and opportunities to work with and train youth have all become vital and dynamic parts of WYA’s work. With the further growth of the North American region through the NAYA it is hoped that the WYA will continue to have an impact and to work with many more youth in the future.