African Youth vow on healthy lifestyles

African Youth vow on healthy lifestyles

African young people have resolved to live and promote accountable, responsible and healthy lifestyles in order to safeguard a brighter future for Africa.

The 103 youth and 1,000 virtual delegates said this in a communiqué at the end of the first ever youth forum as a pre-event to the African Union Summit that started in Kampala today.

The youth say they will achieve healthy and responsible lifestyles through peer-to-peer mentoring and youth-adult partnership in families and communities.

To reach the youth who constitute over 50 percent of Africa's population, the youth say they will use all forms of youth-focused media and communication strategies to promote attitudinal change towards addressing maternal, infant and child health issues.

They also vowed to prevent sexual and gender-based violence as well as facilitate access to justice to young survivors.

The African youth also committed to monitoring and tracking progress on the implementation of the health provisions of the African Youth Charter and Maputo Plan of Action that relate to young people.

They want increased outreach programmes in rural communities to accelerate access to health information and youth-friendly services especially for pregnant girls, young nursing mothers, young people living with HIV and pregnant girls and young mothers with special needs.

South African delegate Bonele Otebe, who represented the youth, said no woman should be allowed to die while giving life to life, a line that has been adopted as a catch phrase for the conference.

The communiqué that will be presented to the African heads of state meeting in Kampala urges governments to integrate, scale up and regularly update life skills and sexual reproductive health education into school curricula as well as out-of-school programmes.

The young people also want African governments to create and enact effective mechanisms to fully implement legislations on sexual reproductive health and rights of young people.

In addition, they want youth participation in the creation of effective mechanisms and implementation by establishing youth desks in relevant government agencies and provide and scale up the provision of youth friendly services.