February 2008: Trade and Youth in Latin America

A key aim of COPLA is to address the effect of trade policies on those who are socially excluded. One sub-group of the population that falls into this category and is of key importance in Latin America is youths – aged between 15 and 25 years.

While many young people are in education or fully employed, a significant number are unemployed, underemployed, seeking employment or ‘neither studying or working’. Of the 57 million youths in Latin America, 22 million (21%) are ‘neither studying nor working’ and 9.5 million (16.6%) are unemployed.

In Peru, Nicaragua and Bolivia there are a number of policies that address this issue of social exclusion among youths. Such policies include Youth development Programmes, ICT training programmes for youths and Entrepreneurial programmes for youths. For instance, Peru has implemented the ‘Young Micro Entrepreneurs’ Qualification Program’ which targets economically disadvantaged youths with the aim to offset the significant lack of entrepreneurial skills among young people.

Although these programmes are successful in improving technical and life skills for youths, new policies should also consider improving youth employment opportunities in Latin America by facilitating better linkages to new market openings brought about by trade. Decision-makers need to consider how to make trade employment opportunities (i.e. export oriented industries) available to youths without these employment opportunities occurring at the expense of working conditions, wages and work benefits.

Currently COPLA is undertaking research on youth, employment and trade in order to explore the opportunities and challenges for youth provided by trade policies. This theme, not originally considered by the programme, will provide additional focus on the situation of young women, indigenous women and women from lagging regions. It will also support ongoing work by the Organisation of American States (OAS) to address youth challenges and policies in support of pro-poor trade liberalisation processes in the region.