Felipe Paullier (the Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs) and Sahira Al Nahari (SDGs) on mental health and football - Press Conference

We're very pleased to have with us now our two guests Felipe Paullier, the Assistant Secretary-General for youth Affairs at my extreme left, and in the center, Sahira Al Nahari, a young leader for the sustainable development goals.
Of course, this has been a great series of weeks to be talking about football and they're here to brief you about football and mental health.
With that, I will now turn over to our guests, please.
Thank you, Farhan, for having us and good afternoon to all the members of the press.
Thank you for being here today.
My name is Felipe Plier.
I am the Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs, and I'm head of the United Nations Youth Office.
I'm pleased to be with Sahira because it's always good also to brief about our work and our initiatives with young people themselves.
Sahira is one of our sustainable development youth leaders and she will bring also her perspective to this conversation.
This is the first time I'm actually joining the noon briefing and I'm grateful that it's to speak on a mayor event we have on Friday, but especially on a mayor topic, which is the topic of youth mental health and well being and a campaign we are launching on youth mental health and well being I hope that this is something of interest to the press and we hope that you can help us also to replicate and to make the message strong.
The youth office that I head is a quite new office in the UN system.
I would say it's youthful yet.
It was established by the General Assembly and it was actually one of the recommendations of the Secretary-General António Guterres in our common agenda.
And we have a mandate to really advance youth engagement across all the pillars of the UN's work and also about strengthening coordination and partnerships in how the UN works with youth and for youth, with member states, but also with civil society organizations and youth organizations.
And we have a very simple principle in how we work, which is really that if we include young people in how the UN works, we have a better UN and we have a UN which is better trust by youth, which compose a third of the world's population.
Today in this world where uncertainty is one of the common things that we are facing, few topics are more urgent and more connected to our mandate in terms of advocacy than the topic of mental health and well being of young people.
Young people are navigating a very complex world with unpredictable change, changes in terms of digital disruption, changes in terms of economic uncertainty, absolutely the consequences of armed conflicts across regions and displacement, but also social isolation.
In this paradox, we live where we are most interconnected than ever.
But at the same time, we have very worrying figures about isolation among people in general, especially adolescents and youth.
The scale of this challenge, it's really significant.
According to the World Health Organization, One in two people will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime and most of them will begin before the age of 24.
But also, we know that the investments that the world is taking on mental health are not sufficient and actually most countries allocate less than 2% of their annual health budgets to mental health.
This contributes according to WHO figures to an annual financing gap of 200 billion.
US dollars.
The truth is that behind these figures, behind these numbers, there's actually people, millions of young people, families, and communities that are carrying a pain which is often unseen, unspoken, and unsupported.
And that's why for the United Nations Youth Office, it's important to launch this advocacy campaign, which is part of a flagship initiative that we will launch during the World Social Summit in Docher Qatar in November 2025.
Which is about positioning mental health and good mental health not simply as the absence of illness, but actually about systems and how systems allow young people to learn, to connect, and to contribute.
And that is why for this, we need really to drive systemic and global shifts in narratives.
And that's why we're taking this event.
We're taking this moment where everyone is looking into football as a connector of humanity, football as something that brings us together, sometimes to celebrate, to talk about something, sometimes to cry when our team is not performing well.
And that's why next Friday, in this UN headquarter in New York, with the United Nations member States Friends Football, we will convene this event one world, one game, one goal just ahead of the FIFA World Cup Men's F, which is happening actually in the same city on Sunday.
Because we believe that football and sports are really a powerful messenger, not only in terms of what they represent when they connect people, how we belong to something, how we empower communities, but also because we know football legends and all in relation to it can be strong messengers to transform narratives.
This Friday we will bring young leaders, policymakers, UN member states more than 40 partners from civil society and private sector coming together in this whole different sessions, and I hope some of you can also be part of it and cover this.
We will launch one year campaign, a public advocacy campaign that it's about elevating youth mental health and well being onto the world stage because we believe that we cannot advance any of the sustainable development goals if there's not a generation that feels supported, that feels empowered and resilient, and we want also to make the case about the importance of investments when it's about youth, mental health and well being of young people.
I hope you can join us on 17 to cover the movement, but also to replicate and to help us in really reducing the stigma around mental health, which is something very important, especially in some regions of the world.
So once again, thank you, and I will pass the floor to Sahira that will share her perspective on this topic.
Thank you so much, doctor Flippi.
Well, first of all, good afternoon, members of the press.
As a lifelong Liverpool fan, I feel obligated to start today with a quote from our legendary manager, Bill Shanky.
He once joked.
Some people think football is a matter of life and death.
I can assure you, it is much more serious than that.
We laugh, but with the Men's World Cup final happening right across the river in just days, the world is vibrating with that exact energy.
Football fills our stadiums.
It also fills our living room.
It gives us tactics, glory and sometimes heartbreak.
If we look closely, it holds a perfect mirror up to the human condition.
And that's why we're here today.
In my role as a young leader for the Sustainable Development Goals, I'm incredibly proud to contribute to this initiative.
So the UN Youth Mental Health and Well being Flagship Initiative is coming and would be launched on the July July 17th, here in the UN, as doctor Flippe mentioned, under the title of One World, One Game, One Goal.
So what does that mean? Let's break it down.
So when we're talking about one world, like football, it's a universal language.
But unfortunately, youth mental health also doesn't have any borders, can affect anyone in any country, in any single crisis and not for a single crisis.
There's the statistics which were mentioned about the World Health Organization highlighting how it's impacting young people.
Suicide is also one of the leading causes of death for young people.
So those are not just statistics, those are stolen futures.
So we cannot erase all the problems that are happening in the world overnight, but because it's a crisis that is universal, our response cannot be fragmented.
We must face it as one world.
What about one game? So football has a lot for us to learn from.
When we're facing a global crisis, let's zoom into the stadiums.
When we look at the stadiums, we learn discipline, resilience, and how to recover from profound loss.
It prepares us, ultimately, for the most complex match of all, which is the game of life.
And on the field, absolutely no one wins alone.
Players depend on a whole ecosystem.
You have defenders, you have midfielders, coaches, medics, and fans in the sand, all having important roles.
And so when we approach youth mental health, we require the same exact ecosystem.
I would like to invite you all to have a look at the brochure that is related to this initiative.
There's a beautiful diagram in one of the pages that shows the whole ecosystem that revolves around mental health.
And that illustration is not just a mirror picture, but it's actually our playbook.
Because I can tell you, I'm a doctor myself, and I can assure you that mental health is not solved in a clinical vacuum.
It's actually revolved around so many things.
We're talking about sports, technology, housing, and community support.
They all play a vital role on the field, but the most important player are the youth themselves.
They are not waiting on the sidelines to be saved.
They are already building solutions and our responsibility is to go to them, reach out, listen, and to partner with them as we succeed to play this game together and for us to win one game.
After all of this, what's the goal? What's the one goal? We brought a global team together.
What are we playing for? Our goal is not to help young people to survive a crisis.
It is to empower them to transcend it when it happens.
We have to have them prepared for it.
To achieve that, we have to give them the tools needed before they break down.
The first universal language as we started, which is sport.
Today, four out of five young people sit physically still while their mind is racing.
Sport often is an outlet, a sense of belonging, a safe place to fall and rise again.
And we see this life saving power in Alfonso Davis, I hope I pronounced it right, who found his voice on a refugee camp football pitch.
We also find it in sea Merini who swam for her life across the open sea before reaching Olympic gold.
But sports is just one tool.
To truly protect youth mental health, our playbook must also give them the tools for safe digital spaces, peer led mentorship and accessible community resources.
Want to make sure that every young person has access to the tools that suits them well, for them to thrive, and for all of us to reach that one goal of empowering them.
To summarize everything, one world, one game, one goal.
Thank you.
Thank you both and I'll now turn over the floor for questions.
As you ask, please let the speakers know to whom you're asking your question.
Thanks very much.
Yes.
Do you have one? Thank you for this briefing.
My name is Abdel Hamid Sam from the Arabic Daily Al Kutsel Arabi.
Thank you again.
I wonder if you didn't mention resolution 2020, 22 50 of the Security Council resolution authorizing the initiating of youth office, I think.
The first youth representative was from Jordan, the country that sponsored that resolution.
I was wondering why it didn't come during your briefing.
And second, Were you thinking of all the underprivileged youth around the world in conflict area when we talk about one word, but there are underprivileged groups in conflict area like in Gaza, in Sudan, in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Myanmar, Kashmir, and many other places in Africa, as you know.
How are we going to integrate all those underprivileged youth? For you, doctor Sahara, about the mental health, there's 2 million in Gaza who need help.
Every young child, every man, every woman, name it, which is that W or recently said everyone in Gaza needs some kind of psychological and mental assistance.
Is that also in your mind when you talk about one word, one game? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your questions and actually resolution 22 50 precedes the establishment of the Youth office.
It was approved in 2015 and sponsored by the Crown Prince of Jordan actually, when at that point, the UN had an envoy for youth.
One of my predecessors, Ahmad, after him, atma came, two of them amazing young leaders that actually have been able to drive transformation across the UN and actually institutionalize youth in the UN.
And that's why the establishment of the office in 2022 by this General Assembly resolution, I think it's a recognition of their work of the leadership, but also a recognition of what young people have been claiming for, which is actually an institutional informal decision making space in the UN system.
Of course, the peace and security dimension is one of the critical areas of work of our office and definitely I believe this flagship effort in terms of advocacy, in terms of making visible, it's actually interconnecting the three of the pillars and definitely the humanitarian response of the UN.
And that's why this flagship I was mentioning that was launched within the World Social Summit platform back in November was actually launched with the support of UNICEF of WHO, the Health Organization with UNESCO.
And since then, more and more UN entities have joined this, including the Refugees Agency, including the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, including UNFPA.
And I would say that every one of us have a role to play in this very big and complex UN system.
Our office has definitely this convening and advocacy role.
I think when we're bringing this topic of youth mental health, we're bringing this from this angle because we believe that the ones that need the most support on their mental health are those in in the most complex of the context, those in countries that are being affected by conflict.
How we're approaching that through our wider UN youth strategy because we have a strategy to work on youth and our office is the convener and the coordinator of that strategy.
A, after this, I'm going to present the accountability report to show how the UN worked in 2025 on the implementation of the strategy.
We all of these entities are actually driving the change at the national level, where they need the most the UN and where the UN can have the strongest response.
But also something for us very critical was since the beginning to build this flagship with youth participation.
We have 800 youth organizations that have been part of the core of the establishment of this flagship initiative and most of them are actually in those contexts.
Most of them are actually youth initiatives in global South countries in those countries where young people are not waiting for change to happen, they are changing things themselves.
That will be my response.
Thank you for the question.
Zahira, you want to address it or you want me to You want to? Yes.
Um, well, I appreciate your question, and we want everyone in the world, especially our brothers and sisters in Gaza and everyone who are in conflict area, to have that accessibility and that tool.
It is a big mission.
It's quite a big mission, and it's our responsibility starting from this program.
So being selected as a United Nations young leader for sustainable development goals, it's other 16 people with me from diverse countries.
I get to hear their stories, I get to hear their interactions and how valuable It is, for example, Saba, she's one of the young leaders.
She's very strong advocate.
She's from Raza and I hear from her the story.
Now we could work together, see how we could bridge and help people there, and therefore like other countries.
It starts from here, but it is growing.
We're looking to expand it in other regions around the world and what is good for them.
It's easy to assume, but it's very important to go to the people, listen, what do they need and how we could help them in the most maximum way possible.
If you have anything to add.
I just have one follow up.
Are you aware that 566 Palestinian soccer player had been killed in Gaza, which equals to 25 teams altogether? Have you issued ology any statement recognizing those victims? Thank you.
Thank you for acknowledging this.
Our office hasn't issued a statement about that.
But you know how strong has been the position of the UN on all of these issues and how the UN has been at the ground working and pushing for this topic.
Gabri.
Thank you very much for the briefing on behalf of the UN Correspondent Association.
Welcome to the room, especially Felipe, your first time.
We hope to see you back many more times in the future to both of you actually.
My name is Gabriel Alisono from Al Jaeera English.
I have a question for each of you.
Felipe number one for you is, um, How do you see artificial intelligence and the explosion of this new technology, transformative technology in relation to youth and mental health? Do you see it as a possible tool to improve mental health or do you see it as an obstacle to obtaining good mental health, particularly in the context of youth? Then for Sahira Feel free to answer that as well if you want.
But the other question I had for you is, as you know and alluded to in the briefing, there's a real stigma with mental health around the world and it varies by culture, varies by country.
How do you see mental health with youth and how do you approach it given the different cultures that approach the subject in a very different way? Some cultures are more open to discussing mental health, as you well know, other cultures, not so much.
It can even be families within the same culture.
How do you approach this subject with that context in mind? Thank you to both of you.
Great.
So Definitely, artificial intelligence as any new technology, and especially one that has accelerated at a speed which is unprecedented presents opportunities and challenges.
I was last week joining the AI dialogue on governance, but also the AI for Good Summit.
And one of the key areas that we actually launch a joint work with the ITU, the Inter telecommunications Union, with the Secretary-General herself is a collaboration in terms of digital well being.
This is connected to this broader flagship effort and the work we are doing, as I was mentioning with many of the UN leading entities on each of these fields, and and I mentioned these two dimensions because it's actually true.
Many of these youth led projects I was mentioning are actually using AI to support their peers when it's about access to mental health.
I was recently in China, in Xinuy University and one of the leading PhD professors was sharing about some paper they were launching showing that how artificial intelligence can create that peer support can be at the same level of experts, physicians and mental health experts.
Definitely, there's huge opportunities with this technology.
On the other hand, what's also happening is that all of these technologies are transforming the way we correlate with each other at a community level.
There's more and more evidence that also interconnection doesn't mean we are more humanly connected.
No.
We have this isolation also factor growing and growing and there's some figures that show that especially how this is affecting young people.
That will be my reflection and of course, working on this with the academia because we believe that we need to drive these also next steps, not only with the former UN entities, but also with leading universities and also in our flagship initiative, there's very well renowned UN universities from different regions that are supporting this effort and the evidence behind this holistic ecosystemic approach that we're taking on mental health, Sahira.
Well, thank you also for this amazing question.
And as we discussed today, the entryway for those discussions is sport.
If we use things that are fun and enjoyable and people feel comfortable to participate in, then it releases the pressure of how heavy mental health discussions are and it allows it to be conversational.
The same thing as art.
I'm a strong lover for arts and back at home, I founded an initiative called Siffa art.
The concept is you get people to paint and then discuss how we're feeling and having that open conversation.
Sometimes the tools don't have to feel heavy.
We have to find tools that gives us the gateway.
We go to areas where youth are already participating.
So where they're playing around, where they're engaging, and also having a strong social media presence that could communicate well with them in their language.
Then they feel comfortable to reach out to ask questions to engage more sufficiently.
There's so many methods that we could approach.
This is a really good entry way and we can think of so many more.
It's just about being creative, um, and trying to make it not as a heavy topic, even though it is, but like ease the language into it.
And as you mentioned, it affects different people differently.
So for men, for example, in the art workshops, they're always hesitant.
They're like, what if you can read my feeling? I'm not comfortable opening up.
But it's just like, have fun with it.
Surprisingly, they always end up throwing football on or their favorite team.
But then they talk to their colleagues, they express how they're feeling at work or even when we're in Siffle art, we target art in hospitals.
I remember having an interview with an artist who had to deal with cancer and art was their way of managing the mental load of this illness throughout that journey.
The question is, let's experiment with tools and see, it's not always go to a therapist or always go and take medications.
Let's explore the range of tools available for us to be able to talk about this conversation.
Yes.
Saddam.
Thank you, Farhan, and thank you very much for your time.
My name is Sina Tunsil from the amargi.
I have a few questions.
I'm going to ask you if there's more time, I will ask more.
And my questions are for both of you, if I may.
The first one is, I noticed that you use football instead of soccer.
I don't judge.
I use football too.
Can you explain to us why do you use football instead of soccer? And my second question is, when it comes to the mental health, what do you do for that, especially when it comes to the conflict areas, let's say Syria, Haiti, or other conflict areas.
Do you find money to build, for example, soccer field or I said soccer.
Sorry about that.
What do you do to help especially the young people in those conflict areas or do you find money for that? Thank you very much.
Great.
Thank you.
I will need to be very brief in the responses because I need to be 150 downstairs for the launch of this 2030 progress report that I was mentioning.
Maybe start with the last question.
I This advocacy campaign has an initial objective of really shaping the narratives because we are fully convinced that the first step to have budgets, have programs, and have services is having this topic at the centrality of the UN discussions.
And that's why also as part of these advocacy efforts, we've been for the past few months organizing in close discussions with some member states from across regions to really drive it forward.
Currently, there is not a fundraising concrete initiative behind this effort.
It's more about the structural change we can bring and how we mobilize also the member states into that direction.
And I connect this with the other piece of the question, which is specifically how we move and how we respond specifically to those humanitarian contexts where the responses need to happen.
I've been 2.5 years working for the UN now and I've learned and every time I visit some of those contexts, I've learned about those initiatives where the UN is already doing things on this and these initiatives are happening from many different parts of the UN.
In some cases, it's UNICEF, in some cases, it's WHO, in some cases, it's IOM, in some cases, it's the refugees agency.
That's why our office took this advocacy role, this leading role, and also this role of doing things with youth and trying to position this topic from that angle.
But what we're trying is to continue to push the limits.
There's more and more responses and more and more of these concrete programs and services coming from the UN side.
As wider of this effort I was mentioning on the UN youth strategy, we're now trying also to accelerate and to understand what are all of those initiatives happening across regions.
Hopefully, in the next few months, we will have a broader picture and we can show it also to you so you can also showcase how the UN is actually supporting the ones that need the UN the most.
Before we go to the last questions, I want to let you know, the Security Council consultations have just wrapped up.
So the special representative for West Africa, Leonardo Santos Jamaal will be going to the stakeout.
So those of you who want to leave and head to the stakeout, if you can feel free to do so.
I think we have a couple of last questions.
So if we could lump them in quickly together.
Yes, in the back.
And did you still have a question or Okay.
Yes, in the back.
Last question.
Yes, please.
Yeah.
Yes, you.
Okay.
Hi.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
I wasn't sure if you were meeting me.
I know.
Anyway, my name is Sam Am I newspaper.
My question is to both of you or to any of you who would like to answer it.
It's about actually the issue of mental health.
When we talk about mental health and approaches and research and initiatives, the issue is that there are actually also different schools and there is an alternative approach today that talks about mental health from the perspective of brown and black and the global South because and connect the whole issue to also systematic oppression, to decolonialization, et cetera, to which extent in your work when you talk about these different approaches, you take also this into consideration.
Thank you.
So I think we will share more details about the broader flagship initiative, not just the event on Friday because I think that also will reflect broadly the foundations of all this moment.
I want to emphasize that this is not an event.
This is an event which is a driver of a broader structural work we are doing with different parts of the UN and that will continue to evolve as we move forward.
And because we want really to use not only sports.
Sahira was also mentioning arts because we really want to meet young people where they are and mental health and youth well being is something of them.
They have a different generational way of also understanding the topic.
This is a strong issue when it's about intergenerational disconnections, and that's why it's so critical for us to move it forward.
The approach that we're taking actually, it's grounded from a fundamental human rights perspective, because human rights resolution and 61 18 recognized mental health as a fundamental human right, and that's the foundation also of how we look at mental health.
But it's also the broader definition that WO has when it's about this state of well being that enables young people to cope to stress of life abilities, and it's much more than just disorders and conditions.
That is the foundation.
Just to respond indirectly because I cannot say directly, we are taking that specific lens.
I think the grounding this whole flagship in 800 youth led organizations that are bringing their perspective from the grassroots has been our way of also being connected to how young people see it themselves.
Of course, supported by the evidence, data and the experts because this is a very sensible topic and we need to be very responsible when we approach it, but also grounded on the lived experiences of young people, especially in global south countries.
Tada.
I just want to breeze.
While I was working on this project and doing my research and reaching out to different people, I received interesting stories.
One of them was someone from Saudi who shared the story of how she went to refugee camps in Syria and she would paint with young people.
One of them expressed how much he loves Christiana Reinaldo.
He did not have the jersey.
He ended up painting the jersey on the shirt and she found a way to bring the jersey to Cristiano Rinaldo and get it signed for him.
It's stories like that this kid Mohammad sai, it's a story like this that you come across and it shows hope and inspiration.
Then we also, um deal with stories about how when I was looking into therapeutic arts, we see how sometimes when you study the different art formats in different areas in the world, for example, a patient who is an old person in a nursing home in comparison, for example, young kids who just escaped a conflict area, you see a lot from you to learn from, you see how they envision their futures, what gives them safety and protection.
It's a huge topic.
It's a very, very huge topic.
What we could do is just build those connections, try to come close to them and retain the hope, retain the I think it's building the hope and make sure that it's still living there.
Then the ecosystem also focuses on housing and human rights.
I think that's a bigger topic than me.
It takes a bigger person to do that, but it's us being educated about it and working together to at least help in progressing towards that whole goal or this one goal of working together as one World.
Thank you, Fada.
Thank you.
That was a great story.
Thank you.
I'd like once more to thank our guests, Philippe Polier, the Assistant Secretary-General for youth Affairs and Sahadi, a young leader for sustainable development goals.
Thanks very much, and I hope you get to your next meeting on time.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Present in the room.