Assemblies - Children and Youth Assembly: Opening session (WUF13)

Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once more.
As mentioned earlier, my name is Jonathan Rickey.
I'm a member of the UN Arbitrary Youth Advisory Board and also the Executive Director of Young Africans for Sustainable Africa.
I'll be the moderator for this Children and Youth Assembly today.
And before we formally begin the assembly, I want to inform you that in case you're not comfortable with English, and now that most of our speakers will be using English, please feel free to go just uh on the room behind the room so that you can get the translators.
Secondly, this is to inform you that we would like us to do a very quick, um, Jog game to this.
What I want us to do is you turn to someone who is next to you, whom you didn't walk into this room with.
Then you ask this simple question.
What is the one thing that you carried to this room today? You turn to someone next to you, probably whom you didn't walk into this room with, then ask this one symbol question.
What is the one word that you carried today into this room? Probably housing, probably people, probably youth, probably future, just anything.
Then I'll get to pick a few voices amongst you before we formally begin the assembly.
Take 30 seconds, get to introduce yourself, get to know the country of someone who is next to you, and also get to know the one word that he or she carried today to the room.
Thanks.
Let's go.
30 seconds.
30 seconds, one word.
And then there we go.
I give you the microphone.
You get to introduce yourself, your country, and also the one word.
So we go Hello.
I am Saba in Aa.
I am from Azerbijan and I am architect.
Also, I am both staff.
Firstly, I want to welcome everyone to our country.
My aim to being here is making happier cities.
Thank you.
Happiness.
Thank you so much.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Kathy.
I'm from India and I've been part of children and youth stakeholder consultations that has been happening and I work with children for children and Initiative I LED approach.
That's connect me here that helped me make children stakeholder in the city.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Sandra Naira from Kenya.
I'm representing an organization of persons with disabilities, that is the United Disabled Persons of Kenya.
I'm here to learn more about how children and youth with disabilities get involved in urbanization.
Yeah.
Hi, my name is Esther Nageti from Ghana.
I am the youth and Gender Advisor at the International Disability Alliance.
My coming into this room is meaningful inclusion and accessibility.
Finally Salam and afternoon to everyone.
Can I get a hi from everyone? Hi.
Loud enough, please.
It's a good afternoon.
Hi.
Come on, guys, more louder.
Hi.
Hi.
Check, check.
Hi.
Okay.
My name is Suhail Aur.
I'm from India, Hindustan, and I've been traveling to multiple nations, representing myself in international podiums and I've been working with multiple schools in India and I've been representing myself as international youth affairs and youth leader alongside where sustainability is a goal, education is a goal, and making everyone understand the basic common component of what is human rather than politics, policies, and culture, religion.
Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity and have a good day.
Have a good trip in Azerbijan.
Thank you.
Excellent and beautiful.
You see, in just 2 minutes, we've brought all together.
We've talked about our challenges.
We've already talked about our hopes, our purpose, our dreams, and our future.
And that is exactly what this assembly is about.
This assembly, the Children and Youth Assembly, is about people.
It's about purpose, it's about progress, and that is exactly what we're going to be discussing today.
It's going to be about titles.
It's going to be about microphones and it's going to be about other subjects.
It will be about you, the young person, and your purpose and your voice.
So Excellencies, distinguished guests and friends, allow me to at this juncture to introduce to you the opening plenary speakers, and I'm going to be mentioning their names as they come to stage, and I'll appreciate if you could give them a round of applause as they take the stage.
The very first one is the Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports of Azerbijan.
Mr.
Fahad, please Then we have miss Malika, the advocacy and campaign lead in the UN Arbit please.
We have Mr.
Iz Ahmed from Bangladesh, the child rights advocate, please.
And finally, we have Mr.
Skar from Seraq Bangladesh.
Excellence is distinguished guests and friends.
This assembly today convened in a very defining moment for us.
The global housing crisis is at its tipping point.
As we speak today, we still have about 3 billion people who are experiencing a certain form of inadequate housing.
We still have 1 billion people who are still living in informal settlements and slums.
We still have 300 million people who are experiencing some forms of displacement and homelessness, displaced by wars, by economic instability, by poverty, by political instability, but worse still by climate disasters from floods to droughts.
That's why we must have this conversation because the children and youth are the most affected people.
Statistics have already shown that by 2050, about 70% of the population will be living in urban areas and about 70% of children and youth will be forming the largest population of these urban settlers.
They're going to be calling these urban areas their homes, their schools, and their workplace.
That's why young people cannot be excluded from the conversations of today because the future of these young people will be dependent by the policies and decisions that will be made today.
Ladies and gentlemen, this assembly today convinced under the theme of our future, the child centered solutions and youth actions towards livable cities.
Ladies and gentlemen, this theme of today calls us not to lament and talk about our challenges, but to shape the solutions that we want.
We have to move from complaints to commitments, from conversations to actions and from challenges to solutions.
I call every one of you to voice yourself, to voice your priorities, and to voice the future that you really want to build.
Therefore, this assembly today also has to be the solutions lab as young people.
We have to be the architects of what we really want.
Through this discussion, we shall be asking ourselves the four main key equations.
The first one is, what are these systemic barriers that are blocking young people from accessing the adequate housing and also from participating in planning of their cities and neighborhoods.
Secondly, we shall be defining what livability means to us.
What does the livable city mean to you? Going to be moving from just housing as just the four walls to the livability challenges that we are facing and how to solve it.
Also, we shall have the opportunity to showcase some of the youth led proven, scalable solutions that are already solving a lot of livability challenges in our cities.
Finally, We shall all come up with the key recommendations that shall shall guide all the conversations throughout this forum, mostly in the mainstream high level conversations and also at the outcome of these HF 13 Bu call to action.
We shall do this in five main thematic areas, what we shall be calling the session lab part.
The first one is that we shall have the first as session on pathways for livability.
The second one shall be the planning for prosperity.
The third one will be young people as evidence builders.
The fourth one shall be the investing in generational affordability, and finally, the safe space for children and youth.
Once that time comes, we shall let you know how to go about it.
As we conclude and before calling our first speaker, allow me to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the UN arbiter and the government of Azerbijan for the warm welcome and also for making the children and youth assembly to be on the very first day.
But so importantly, the young people and the beautiful volunteers who have made this assembly to be as auspicious as it is.
Thank you so much and One thing I want to appreciate, want to assure you is that this assembly today is going to be energetic, going to be interactive, and it will be about passing the microphone to the rightful person who is you over there.
Be ready to speak out and also be ready to prioritize your priorities.
Thank you so much.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is my a distinct honor and pleasure to invite Mr.
Fahad to make his welcoming remarks.
Mr.
Fahad is the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports affairs in the government of Azerbijan.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Fahad and thank you for being with us.
Welcome.
Thank you, Salam, welcome to Azerbijan.
Again, my name is Farhad.
I'm coming from the Minister of Houston Sport and maybe as many of you, I have a big job background.
I've been in the NGO since maybe my childhood and it was very good time of my life.
Distinguished guests, colleagues, partners, and most importantly, young people, It is a true honor to welcome you all in this assembly of the 30th session of the World Urban Forum here in Azerbijan.
As a host country, we are proud not simply to convene this gathering, but also to create a platform where children and young people are placed exactly where they belong at the center of conversations about the future of the cities.
Because today is not about another formal discussion, It is about one urgent issue.
What kind of cities are we leaving to the next generation and perhaps even more important, will young people may inherit our cities or will they help shape them? Let us be honest, the future of the cities will not be decided only in conference rooms alone.
It will be decided also by the generation growing up inside those cities.
Right now, by the young people who experience every day what inclusion feels like, what exclusion feels like, and what opportunity feels like.
By 2050, the majority of young people in the world will live in urban areas.
This means that the decisions we make today.
This means that the majority of young people in the world will live in the urban areas.
This means that the decisions we make today will shape not only the skylines and infrastructure, but the everyday realities of millions of lives.
Whether young people will save, whether they feel hurt, whether they can afford to live in the cities they grow, they grow up in, whether they can dream there.
This is why the team of the assembly, our homes, our future matters so deeply.
Because home is not just a physical space.
Home is a dignity, home is a security, home is a belonging.
For every child, home should be the place where hope begins not where inequality starts.
City can have modern buildings, digital technologies, and ambitious development plans.
But if a young person feels excluded, unsafe, isolated, or invisible there, then the city is not truly livable.
Across the world, millions of children and young people continue to live in adequate housing and undeserved communities without equal access to public spaces, education, well being, or opportunities.
These are not abstract statistics, these are everyday realities.
We often celebrate greatness only after the world has already discovered it.
We celebrate champions like Mohammed Ali or Christian Ronaldo Meso, but how many future champions have we already lost? Not because they lacked talent, but because they lacked safety and opportunity, stability, education, or simply a place to call home.
Somewhere tonight in an over crowded neighborhood or an undeserved community, they may be a young person with extraordinary potential whose name the world may never know, simply because opportunity never reached them.
This is the real cost of inequality, not only economic loss, but human potential that never had the chance to rise because talent is universal, but opportunity is not.
This is why our responsibility is not simply to build smarter cities, it is to build fair, more human cities, cities that work not only efficiently but compassionately.
In Azerbaijan, we see young people not as observer of development, but as a partner in shaping it.
Our experience has taught us an important lesson.
Sustainable cities are not built only with concrete technologies or infrastructure.
They are built with participation, with the identity, with trust, with the belief that every generation must have a voice in shaping the places where they live.
When Azerbaijan talk about sustainable urbanization, we match our words with actions.
Through our national housing initiatives, over 55% of beneficiaries of our affordable housing projects are young people under 35, proving that empowering a next generation of urban citizens is at the very heart of our state policy.
Through initiatives such as National Youth capital program cities like Susa and G Karan have expanded youth engagement, cultural participation, and social inclusion, later gaining recognition as international youth capitals.
In Karabakh and Eastern Zang Gzur we are not simply rebuilding territories.
The construction is not only about rebuilding roads and buildings, it is about rebuilding trust, opportunity, and everyday life.
Today, Azerbijan is building nine new cities and hundreds of settlements in post conflict areas with the belief that every community deserves not only recovery, but the chance to thrive.
We are reimagining how communities can live, work, study, and grow through green energy, digital innovation, and human centered urban planning.
Today, around 85,000 people leave, work, and study in these revitalized areas.
At the same time, we believe that these cities must remain healthy, accessible, and connected.
This is why initiatives such as healthy communities, sport mornings and the FeedCack Project bring people public life movement and well being closer to young people.
Because a liable city is not only a city where people reside, it's a city where people feel alive.
And while we invest in innovation and modernization, we also recognize something equally important.
Cities without identity eventually lose their soul.
This is why protecting cultural heritage, preserving traditions, and strengthening social cohesion remain essential parts of sustainable urban development.
From the historic old city of Baku to traditional sports such as Chokgn Azerbijan continues to promote both modern progress and cultural continuity.
However, no country can address these challenges alone.
The future of urban development demands cooperation across generations, across institutions, and across borders.
That is why platforms such as World Urban Forum Children and Youth Assembly matter so much.
Because this is not symbolic participation, this is not use engagement as a formality.
This is a space for real influence, as my friend said before.
A space where young people help shape ideas, policies, and solutions that can directly impact the future of cities worldwide.
To the young people in this room, I want to say clearly, your voice is not secondary, your experience is not optional and your leadership is not something for the future alone.
It is needed now.
To all decision makers and partners present today, we should say our responsibility is equally clear, not simply to invite young people into conversations, but to genuinely listen to them, to trust them, and to create systems where the participation leads to real impact.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you so much, the Deputy Minister, and we have to appreciate that indeed the children and youth must be placed in their rightful position.
That is the center of the conversations, and that home must be about security, must be about dignity and must be a belonging.
Thank you so much.
And after that powerful remarks, allow us to get to watch a video message for Mr.
Felipe Paula, who is the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations of Youth Affairs.
Thank you, and should be playing shortly.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Philippe Pollier and I serve as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs and head of the United Nations Youth Office, an office created by the General Assembly to advance youth issues and meaningful youth participation at every level.
It is my privilege to join you at the 13th session of the World Urban Forum Children and Youth Assembly at this round table and Pavilion.
For young people everywhere, home is not just where they live.
It is where they grow, where they feel safe, and where opportunities begin.
Yet for far too many, that foundation remains uncertain.
Across the world, millions of young people face inadequate housing, living in formal settlements or experience the growing impact of climate change in their neighborhoods.
This is something that must change.
Every young person deserves a home that offers safety, dignity, and hope.
And every city, every community, and every neighborhood has a responsibility to make that possible.
That means investing in affordable housing, ensuring access to basic services, and creating safe, inclusive public spaces where all children and youth can thrive.
But homes alone are not enough.
We must also talk about livability.
For young people, a livable city is one that is healthy, that is inclusive, and that is full of possibilities.
It is a city with adequate and affordable housing, with clean air and green spaces, a city where mobility and basic carbon services are safe and accessible, a city that connects young people to quality education, to decent jobs, and to digital opportunities.
Today, livability also means resilience because climate change is not a distant threat.
It is already reshaping cities and communities around the world.
Across the globe, young people are already leading.
They are innovating, they are organizing, and they are redesigning your communities in bold and very creative ways.
What young people need is real power, real power to shape decisions rooted in institutions and systems.
Today, I call on policymakers, on city leaders, and on institutions.
Please listen to young people, invest in their solutions, and institutionalize their meaningful participation in urban planning and governance.
As partners and not only beneficiaries.
Because when we work with young people to co create cities, we do more than build infrastructure.
We are building trust, we are building resilience, and we are building shared futures.
Together, let us build cities that are not only livable, but they are truly belong to all of us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Indeed, Homes alone is not enough.
We must ensure that it talks about livability.
Thank you so much to Mr.
Felippe.
Ladies and gentlemen, now, allow me to welcome Mr.
Iter Ahmed, the child and rights advocate from Bangladesh.
Thank you so much, sir, and welcome.
Excellencies, respected guests and fellow changemakers.
Good morning, good afternoon to all.
My name is Indy Jahmed.
I am 17-years-old, and I'm from Bangladesh and now I'm living in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
I grew up in a small city, small town, and now this small town become the largest city in the world, second biggest city.
As an advocate of child rights, I have seen and both of challenges.
I have seen this child who are smiling and I have seen those of the child, same child who were suffering with many of problems in our society.
When we hear the word housing, we understand these brick, mortars, a static sticks.
But for a child, a home is not just a structure.
It is a foundation for every one of our every rights.
Without a safe, livable home, how can a child stay healthy? Without a roof over our heads? How can we access basic rights like clean water, sanitation, and hygiene? When a home is unstable and not safe, education becomes luxury.
We can't afford because we are too busy to surviving.
We want to highlight that a safe home is a shields to protect from violence, ensure us to basic rights and foundation that allows to dream us.
From my understanding, a child friendly city must protect its most vulnerable and youngest residents from the threat by the climate or that they don't create it.
The climate crisis from my experiences working with the vulnerable children from the climate affected communities, they are not just affected by climate change.
They're living in every single day.
When the flood come, water logging happens or heat waves become unbearable.
It is the children in Ilum who first lose their rights to play and learn.
From our assembly, we want to bring forward urban planning solutions that account for our rights of the last my children.
This means ensuring that even the densest, poorest neighborhoods, there is a space to breathe, space to move safely, and most importantly, the right to chill to dreams.
Finally, we build a sustainable world.
We expect that you stop looking at the future, we are the present.
We have to own the point of views, the priorities and experiences.
Our ambition is that the Child and Youth Assembly will be called a formal permanent pathways, our children and youth be active partners in the urban governance.
We don't want to be invited to meeting or forums just to say participations.
We we want our point of views and our experiences to be taken seriously when the design of our city systems, solutions, and policies When you include us, you aren't being kind.
You are being smart because the city the city works for a child, a city, works for everyone.
Our expectations from this forum, especially the children and youth assembly are bold.
We expect our children and youth declaration to move beyond these walls and directly shape our official Bu to call action action to call Baku, ensuring our rights and participation as the youngest citizens are at the heart of the global nation policies and solutions.
We expect strong partnerships that take our children and youth less solution from this assembly, every neighborhoods, especially for children who are living in the developing and less developing country and build cities that truly leave no on behind.
Whenever we are from Baku, we are from Azerbijan or we're from Bangladesh, or anywhere else in this world, we deserve cities that don't just house us but hold us and hope with us.
Let's work together, not for us, but with us, build a world where every child has a safe place to call home.
Thank you, everyone.
It was me India Jahmad Thank you so much, Hamad and it's a great pleasure.
Indeed, we must build cities that leave no one behind and then that every child is safe to be in that city.
Thank you so much, Ahmad.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to welcome miss Malika, the advocacy and campaign lead in the UN Arbitrator, a great leader whose work continues to inspire more young people to speak to us.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates, fellow views advocates.
I would like to present the overview of the Azerbi Urban campaign, which is a national initiative launched by UN Habitat and the State Committee on Urban planning and architecture of the Republic of Azerijan.
The campaign was designed to transition youth engagement from symbolic consultations as my previous speakers already mentioned, into a structured participatory role within the urban governance.
To understand the impact of the campaign, it's necessary, of course, to examine its scope, its methodology, its partnership model, and institutional outcomes.
So since October 2025, the campaign has expanded its reach more than 6,000 young people across Azerbijan.
A core operational objective was to deliberately look beyond the capital of the capital city of the Baku.
The campaign focused heavily on reaching rural areas and provinces to introduce the foundational concept of urban development to you who had historically had never been in these dialects.
So the priority was to equip young people living in smaller villages and regional towns with the vocabulary of urban and platform needed to analyze and discuss the future of their own local settlements.
The campaign's fieldwork was executed more than 100,000 events in total.
Rather than relaying a singular format where you are invited and just coming to listen, the EUC, as the vision urban campaign utilized the multidisciplinary approach to unpack complex global themes of the Word urban Forum.
These 110 activations were divided into distinct formats.
Round tables and panel sessions.
Platforms were interacted directly with local municipal authorities to discuss regional planning, to discuss their own issues and the solutions that they found to solve these problems.
Also academic symsis and student workshops, the technical sessions where students spanning fields from architecture to medicine, teaching, and engineering bridged creative ideas with practical urban frameworks.
Concerts and interactive sessions, of course, cultural interventions used to translate complex sustainable development goals into accessible community level concepts.
Grounded in its operational framework, the Azbiion Urban campaign also integrated targeted initiatives like Opportunities for all project.
This project was built on the core philosophy of leaving Nov behind and also promoting cities for all, specifically aiming to foster inclusive communities and support persons with disabilities to become active users of the city.
A direct result of these practical workshops and the training in short term internships, we are currently finalizing a comprehensive inclusivity action note document alongside both government and private sector partners.
Most importantly, which is I am proud to say, out of the 25 participants of this social project, seven have already received the permanent job offers from the partners where they completed their internships.
The operational success of the Azo Vision Urban campaign also relied on its function as an institutional platform for partnership.
Instead of running isolated programs, the campaign systematically mapped and connected existing use networks, local use houses, public institutions, and civil society.
By breaking down institutional silos, the Azo Vision Urban campaign allowed diverse stakeholders to co design, co fund, and co execute these 110 events collectively, establishing a replicable framework for interagency cooperation in the future.
The legacy of the Azovision Urban campaign does not rest on a single output.
Rather, each of the 110 events left localized capacity, active use networks, and heightened civil awareness within the participating municipalities.
At the Azovision Urban campaign, young people are not only identifying challenge, they are actively proposing the solutions centered on shifting youth participation from consultation to actually the system itself.
What they were offering in the past, let's say nine months, it's the co design that introducing use audits before urban projects to ensure technical designs match use realities.
For example, let me just give an example here.
More of us already know different parks that are designed world owned architects and they put really big budgets on the parks.
But whenever you visit the parks, there are no use sitting, there are no use spending time in these parks because nobody asked you actually, how would you like to sit in that park? How you would like to spend some time and how you would like to entertain with your friends in that area.
That's why use audits would be a beneficiary for both sides.
Also the belonging, shifting from symbolic empty spaces truly inclusive, safe community hubs, and also legacy that is embedding youth participation directly into long term urban development frameworks.
To institutionalize the quality data gathered during these months, we are currently working in close with coordination with the Ministry of Youth and Sports to finalize use voices from the cities of Azerbijan report.
Document serves as the formal data driving synthesis of the concrete opinions, grassroots innovations, and structural recommendations collected from all over the country's young people who are actively engaging with us right now.
It explicitly outlines how the next generation forces the country's spatial development and urban future.
The report represents a strategic outcome of the campaign also designed to be placed directly into the hands of the national decision makers and global leaders here at the W 13 to inform future policy frameworks.
Crucially, of course, Wolf oren is not the finish line.
A fundamental objective of the UC as Vision Urban campaign is sustainability.
Therefore, all operations, all institutional frameworks, inclusive ET systems, and use networks established over the past months will continue to function seamlessly after the forum concludes.
All collective efforts will continue to expand, ensuring that the mechanisms built during the campaign remain permanent drivers of the local urban development and the governance.
In summary, the Azo Vision Urban campaign demonstrates that when given the structural tools, when given the conceptual clarity and collaborative platforms, use from both urban capitals, also the rural village who are living in the rural village can systematically contribute to inclusive, accessible, and sustainable national urban agendas.
Thank you for listening.
If you would have any questions about the Azo Vision Urban campaign, I will be happy afterwards to answer your questions.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for such amazing work that you're doing.
With that one, guys, it's time for us to bring the microphone back to where it belongs.
That's the time to make this room to be the solutions lab.
As mentioned earlier, we shall be breaking out for the five sessions.
Before we all go and dive into and making this room to be the lab bridging between your work as grassroot young leaders and young change makers, the global urban policies, I would like us to I would like, at this point to invite Shekhar.
Mr.
Shia has been the UN Arbitrary Youth Advisor back in 2015.
Currently works as the UN Arbitrary Youth Advisory Board mentor and also is the Executive Director of Seraq Bangladesh.
Mr.
Shaker will give us the guidelines towards how to go about decisions and one thing we have to mention is that decisions will help us to influence the outcome of the Baku call to action and will also play a very critical role in the midterm review of the new Urban agenda.
Finally, we'll also inform the roundtable discussions that we shall have on the 21st, and finally, we'll be part of the global declar actions for young people.
Ensure that you influence and also ensure that the outcome of each and every pathway reflects what are your priorities in this hoof.
Thank you so much and it's a pleasure to welcome Mr.
Shia.
Well, thank you, Jonathan.
Actually, I see that Jonathan not just my name and designations, he already mentioned what I'm going to say.
But again, thank you and good afternoon everyone, and welcome once again to this assembly, Children's Youth Assembly at Roo 13.
We're now actually entering one of the most exciting parts of today's program, the solutions lab.
Over the next sessions, after taking the break, I was anywhere going to say that we are going to take a 30 minutes break after my speech.
Do not get out of the room before I finish.
Then you come back and we actually start the solutions lab, which is the space will transform from a conference room into a live laboratory of ideas, experiences, frustrations, creativity, and hopefully practical solutions.
These breakout sessions are not designed as traditional panel discussions where people politely listen, nod, and secretly check their phones.
You do.
This is meant to be interactive, participatory, and co creative.
We want conversations, disagreements, imagination, sticky notes everywhere, and hopefully they will allow these beautiful walls with sticky notes and hopefully by the end, strong recommendations that can genuinely shape the Bu call to action.
Each session focuses on a critical urban challenge connected to livable cities and the future of children and youth in urban spaces.
Together, the groups of this solution lab will help develop strategic pathways that connect local experiences with policy and implementation.
Let me quickly walk you through the five solution sessions and introduce our amazing facilitators and colleagues.
Session one, pathways for livability, facilitated by myself, of course, and my amazing partner, Fosa Stanzada here.
This session will explore youth li solutions already improving our cities and what pathways are needed to make these ideas official, supported, and sustainable.
If you enjoy conversations around participation, governance, innovation, and urban futures, please join us our session.
We promise energy, interaction, and hopefully controlled cows.
Session number two, planning for prosperity led by Joshua and Saba.
We'll focus on planning reforms, zoning, housing, entrepreneurship, and creating enabling environments for decent work and opportunities for young people.
Session number three, young people as evidence Builders facilitated by Victoria Chavez and Faith Ado will explore how youth generated data and lived experience can become part of official city planning and evidence based urban decision making.
Session four, investing in generational affordability, led by Cherry Es and Santhi Ram Rai, will examine innovative financial tools and affordability solutions for future generations.
Session five, last but not least, safe and healthy spaces for children and youth, facilitated by Emma, De Vills and Alan Rabani.
We'll focus on safety, well being and healthy urban spaces, particularly in informal settlements.
Emma has actually already informed me that it's going to be there may be drawing, visioning, and creative exercises involved.
Honestly, that session may end up being the most fun one today.
The pressure is now on the rest of us facilitators.
Across all stations, we encourage you to when you come back, you to share practical experiences, challenge existing systems, think boldly, and most importantly, help shape actionable recommendations that will actually reflect on the documents and tools that will be delivered from this a urban forum.
A quick logistical reminder that I already mentioned that probably the interpretation will remain available here for the plenary, but for the breakout sessions, we may not have the interpretation.
We'll have to just and definitely we have a multi spoken, you know, colleagues in those leads and colleagues.
And at the end of the breakout discussion, each group will return with key recommendations, strategy pathways that will contribute directly to the children your declaration and the broader Bu call to action process.
Now I would like to invite Jonathan to actually say, we have to go out of the room for 30 minutes to analyze the logistics that when we come back and how do we do it? Definitely thank you and let the solution lab begin in 30 minutes.
Thank you.
Exciting and most definitely we're going towards the most exciting part of this assembly today.
I would like us to, as mentioned earlier on, take your 20 to 30 minutes, discuss about what you really expect during the breakout rooms and also what are your perspectives about what the speakers have already mentioned so far.
Then once we are back, one thing we have to mention to you, I just want to give you the stipends of the future is that this room will be totally different once you leave it and come back in 20 minutes.
Secondly, is that we have the closing ceremony, which is going to be very amazing than thoughts.
So stay tuned.
Ensure that you come back and then let's see what is in store for us during the closing ceremony.
Above all, outside there, let's get to get energized, get to continue this conversation and get to network because young voices are all needed at the end of it all.
Thank you so much and just a minute.
I I appreciate it.
As mentioned, this assembly will be full of surprises and exciting moments for sure.
So before we break out, we have a surprise visit for you.
Let us wait for a couple of minutes, probably two or 3 minutes, and then she will break it out that the regional programs director of UN Arbit should be joining us and should be sending his greetings to.
It's something that you sure't want to miss, of course.
Let's just give it two to 3 minutes and definitely will be joining us today.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, one thing that amuses me is that young people are always expecting everything at any time.
As mentioned earlier on, the surprises are always right, left, and at the center.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this juncture today and this moment, allow me to welcome the surprise visit, Mr.
Patrick, the regional programs Director of UN Arbitat to speak to us.
He's already in the room.
Welcome, Mr.
Patrick.
Good afternoon, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen and more importantly, young people.
There's a lot of enthusiasm here, I believe.
I just walked in.
I just wanted to say I've been introduced several terms have been used to introduce me in the past, but never as a surprise.
I guess there's always a first time, so thank you for that.
I just want to bring greetings on behalf of UN Habitat.
For us, this is a very special moment.
Just not But the fact that the assembly actually brings together and catalyzes the voices of young people is quite exciting.
Partners, practitioners, young leaders, colleagues and friends.
It truly is an honor to interact with you at the Children and Youth Assembly during a pivotal moment for institutionalizing the meaningful participation of children and youth in sustainable urban development.
If I may just take a moment on a personal note and say this I Before joining UN Habitat, I've spent a good part of my professional career working for child focused organizations across the globe and hence the reason I'm quite excited when I was both extended the invitation, but also to come and listen to what young people have to say.
But listening to young people is such a critical part of how we co create solutions.
Ladies and gentlemen, young people across the world, and as we can see in this very room, young people are leading actions, not to be told, but they are initiating.
You are generating data, designing solutions, and transforming neighborhoods.
That's a big deal.
Over the last few months preceding the World Urban Forum, UN Habitat through the Youth Advisory Board facilitated regional consultations with young people across Asia Pacific, Africa, the Arab States, and the Eksook Youth Forum.
Across regions, and this has been consistent, friends, and this is a really important piece for us.
As regions and children and youth have consistently raised remarkably similar concerns, and that has to do with access to affordable housing, safer public spaces, climate vulnerability, exclusion from decision making, and unequal access to opportunity.
The latter, as we know, is systemic, quite prevalent, and prevalent across the globe.
But there's something else that they have reminded us about.
They also brought forward solutions.
They haven't just focused on problem statements and this to a great extent has been grounded in their own lived realities and communities.
Across all these regions, a few stood out and I think it's quite pertinent that I highlight them this afternoon.
One of the things that has been clearly amplified is that we must move from consultation to core decision making, from pilot projects to initiatives that inform policy and from participation to inclusive governance.
Not to be passive, but the opportunity and the invitation to be proactive.
We are already seeing proof of this shift.
Young people have engaged through habitats own programs and are now running for local government.
I have to say, I should have said this right at the beginning.
I've been with UN Habitat for just a month now.
I celebrated my first month just yesterday.
But one of the things that my colleagues highlighted to me was the importance of youth and the engagement with youth.
As I'm learning in terms of the work that UN habitat has done when it comes to youth engagement, working with young people, I'm beginning to realize more and more the boldness, the audacity in the most positive way and constructive way, the difference that young people are making.
For example, they have understood that what took past generations, decades to learn, including think of governance, it's not something that's done to communities, it is something built by them.
These young candidates are not waiting for permission.
I don't know about you, but that excites me.
They're standing for councils, contesting vote seats and putting forward platforms rooted in the urban challenges they live every day.
But there's another reality, friends.
Too often children and youth solutions remain small scale initiatives and they are not systemic and that's a problem by itself.
The onus is on us to collectively change this.
We must recognize young people not as beneficiaries of cities, but as co creators of sustainable urban development.
Young people are not just generating ideas, they're building the digital and financial architectures to sustain them.
From open data flat platforms that make cities more transparent to youth la savings groups that fund community improvements.
They're quite frankly shaping how cities are built, governed, and financed.
This is the question for us.
The question is that it's no longer whether you can lead, it is whether institutions will move fast enough to follow you.
I think that's a positive challenge for all of us.
We must integrate youth data into how we plan and govern our cities.
But we also have something else important to do here, colleagues.
We must connect housing to livelihoods, mobility, safety, and social inclusion.
These are critical imperatives for us and we must ensure that no one is left behind.
Especially those in informal settlements, those facing digital exclusion and exclusion in general, and those without access to opportunity.
Through this assembly, you will not just have the opportunity, but you will shape the Woof 13 Children and Youth Declaration, ensuring youth priorities directly influence the Baku call to action and inform global agendas, including SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda.
Friends, UN habitat is committed to the transformation.
Our commitment is that we will work with children, youth, In particular, children and youth, and inclusion practitioners to develop a children and youth strategy aligned to UN Habitat strategic plan and the Pact for the future.
Through initiatives such as the Young Game Changers, Hearst City and Youth 2030 cities, we will work with young people to lead actions towards adequate housing, SDG localization, climate action, inclusive governance, peace and security, and the development of youth led data systems.
In addition, we look to strengthen our collaboration with the Global Alliance, Cities for Children, and the United Nations Interagency Network on youth development towards promoting inclusive and sustainable development.
Young leaders, the future of our cities is not something you're waiting for.
That's a reality.
It is something you're already building, and we want to thank you for it.
But our responsibility is very clear.
I want to double down on this.
The onus on all of us to listen, to enable, to catalyze, and to act.
That's an opportunity that we share with you.
Let this assembly be the turning point where your voices become policy, your ideas become systems, and your leadership becomes the foundation for more livable, inclusive, and just cities for all.
Now, in case there wasn't any excitement in what I said, I can tell you I am excited.
I truly and genuinely am excited.
I just want to take this opportunity to thank each of you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, our director, and as mentioned earlier on during our introductory part, we really want to appreciate the UN abit for putting the Children and Youth Assembly on the very first day of this forum, and we just hope that our priorities shall be mainstreamed in all the high level conversations throughout this forum and that our priorities and recommendations shall be featured in the Baku call to action and also that we shall have a synergetic work between the young people and the UN Arbiter towards the realization of the SDG 11, the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, and also the implementation of the new UN Arbiter Strategic Plan.
Thank you so much and it is a great pleasure to have you today.
Thank you so much.
Now that mentioned, we're coming to our 30 minute break.
We just hope that it won't be that long and once we are back, we shall be having the exciting part of this session today.
Thank you so much and thank you for being part of this assembly.
Hello, everyone.
Hi.
Can you remember to take your belongings with you so that the movers can actually assign and arrange the chairs, and then we'll see you in 30 minutes time.
Please remember to come.
It's going to be very exciting, see you in 30 minutes.
Thank you.
Yes.
Everybody Yeah.
Dear guests, I'm kindly asking everyone to leave the room since we are about to change the chair layout, and at the same time, we're about to do the cleaning process of the room.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Yes.
Challenging but.
And then.
Dear guests, we're about to start logistic planning and also the cleaning works.
I'm kindly asking you to leave the room and after 30 minutes, you will be able to come here again to the second part of the session.
Thank you very much.
Because we know that Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it.
That's it.
On 20 for looking at that I I the tomorrow Commission.
That's about the I have I don't remember.
Thank you.
Here you go.
5 minutes.
Good afternoon, pull them in.
You have a Thank you.
The I use the bag.
I Thank you.
Okay.
Good afternoon.
Welcome once more.
We believe that we should beginning in a few probably in two or 3 minutes.
Just a quick one in case you're interested with the very first breakout session.
The pathways for livability, here is the section that you should be joining.
Then the second one, planning for prosperity.
It's right over there, shall be facilitated by our brother Joshua.
Then in the middle over here with Emma is the fifth one.
That is the safe spaces for children and youth.
Far almost at the door, we have doctor Sheri who shall be leading investing for generational affordability.
Then these other one over here on my far right is the third one that is young people as evidence builders.
Get to settle in one that excites you.
Just add on message is that is that in case you are interested in sketching using AI, that is the artificial intelligence, the one on my far right towards the door that is Investing for Generation affordability shall be doing some of the sketches, so feel free to join them.
We should be starting probably in two or 3 minutes and I would like to welcome Lenin to continue playing music as we settle into our seats in a few.
Thank you.
Okay.
I It could be very All right.
Jonathan.
That I think this is called for everyone so people will know that they can't talk anymore.
Yes.
Hello everyone.
Hello, everyone.
Let's settle into our seats, please.
We should be beginning shortly.
Before we dive into the discussions of the day, I would like to introduce to you the facilitator of these moments, who shall take us through what is expected of us.
She be taking 3 minutes.
She's at Das.
Children and youth advocate and also an expert on that field for quite some time.
She'll guide us on how to do it and how it's supposed to be done.
Welcome, t.
Hello Hello.
Is all okay? It's okay.
Good.
Welcome everyone.
It is a delight to be here.
I'm really delighted that the room is so full.
Obviously, all the right people are here.
Despite a day of deluge, we're here for action.
You know, I won't go into all the major big words which define and probably place youth participation, children and youth agency.
So clearly, we've heard all the speakers this morning.
What I would like to do now is introduce you to action.
We really need to get into action the conversations need to be now framed into concrete next steps and concrete recommendations from everyone who is in the room, who are, of course, people who are working at grassroots level, or working as policy people, partners in promoting, advocating, fostering relationships with young people on the ground.
Let me just explain what we are doing.
This is the solution lab session and what we are doing here.
We have, as you're all seated, the five solution labs, the five teams.
I'm going to not introduce you've all heard who are the leaders and co leaders of these sessions.
These sessions will run for 40 minutes.
Then we have, I believe, subject matter experts in each of these, um sessions, we will give 10 minutes to have a look at the content being generated and then analyze and give us some recommendations.
Does that sound all right? 40 minutes, even if it is not, we have to make it happen because we are running late for time.
I would like to now spell out the five pathways, as you can see.
But what are the questions that you are deliberating? That's what we have to now look at and I will spell those out for you.
Pathways for livability.
Rehab Shia and Ferrousa be Alina will be talking about which youth led solutions in your city are solving livability challenges and what pathways are needed to make them official.
So this is really about institutionalization of participation.
We are no longer requesting children and youth and young people to, can we join? Can they be at the table? No, no more of that.
This is about reimagining intergenerational relationships.
I think that's what we focus on today is the reimagination of intergenerational relationships and what that means in terms of content for recommendations.
The second planning for prosperity, the question they're deliberating are, what specific zoning changes and planning reforms would ensure adequate housing policies that create an enabling environment for decent work and entrepreneurship.
As you know, housing is just an entry point of urban livability.
Urban livability is the theme of our session, our assembly here.
Let's look at integrated approach using housing as an entry point to all the other livability challenges that face us today.
Third one, young people as evidence builders.
We have UN habitats signature flagship program, which we will be talking a little bit later on in roundtable or so, the Youth 2030 cities, which is an advocacy and initiative promoting urban governance and youth as evidence Builders is the tagline of that initiative.
How is the question, third group, how can we transition towards collaborative municipal systems? Where youth led data is integrated as a standard high value input for evidence based city planning.
You've all got these questions just in the interest of everyone being on the same page.
Session four, investing in generational affordability.
What new financial tools can we design to make housing affordable for the next generation? Then the fifth and really absolutely important one is all are important, but this is a critical factors of urban livability, safe and healthy spaces for children and youth.
The question, what are the non negotiable safety, health and well being standards for children and youth in informal settlements that must be integrated into the Baku call for action.
Now, those of you who don't know, of course, I'm sure you have got an understanding this morning that all the proceedings, deliberations, conversations, negotiations will feed into this document, Baku Call for action.
Some of us here, including myself, are on the drafting committee, and we want to ensure that whatever is discussed here, the recommendations, the concrete actions are there for us to include in and represent your thoughts, your ideas into the Baku Call for action.
The last one I want to say is the content, the pathways report that each of your sessions, each of the groups will be producing will inform a children and youth declaration.
And I will speak a little bit about it once we get all the content as we start to bring it all together and summarize.
Over to action then to all of you.
If there are any questions, I'm happy to take but 40 minutes, 10 minutes for subject matter experts for analysis.
The time starts now.
But I can take one question, one or two.
But I will be moving around so if there is any chaoise here as well, any clarifications, please do catch us and we'll be there to assist.
Thanks very much.
Over to you for action, as I said, good luck.
Sorry.
Hi everyone.
Is there anyone who wants to go over investing in generational affordability section? Would you want to switch groups? Probably, maybe one or two of you? Do you want to share? Yes, no? Okay.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Can you hear me? Okay.
Hello.
Okay.
Okay.
I am Shane Simon I am 28-years-old.
I graduated from Public Administration Academy.
I majored in P science, by the way, and I don't know why she's smiling.
My goal to be here, is to socialize and define your perspect.
I and to three.
I Oh, my God.
I.
Do you know what was wrong on the table? But it is here.
This is so.
So it needs to be here.
I No, let me do.
Am we good? No, I look fish.
You make that one.
It makes that one.
So that, how do you ten? So I'm locked up.
And get scared, depending on the depending on the.
Now, now, yeah, you hear.
We can give her this.
Maybe she hears better with this.
It's very loud now.
It's okay for her, right? Yes.
Ma'am, headphones.
Colleagues and friends headphones We are on the homestretch of our discussions and we should be starting the closing ceremony in probably 5 minutes.
This is to inform you that once you're done with your session, you shouldn't break out because we have the ceremony activities to be done, please stay put and wait for the closing ceremony.
Thank you, and we should be starting in You can actually find out what's really happening in their head of a child for this session.
From the beginning perfect? I'm not sure if I should say everything from the beginning.
No.
I wish you could repeat the whole session for this lady, but I'm going to ask Jonathan I Huh? I thought he was saying the session was closed, but this microphone is for this lady who needs help with her hearing.
She asked for a microphone and headsets at the beginning of the session and now it's just arrived right now.
We just have to repeat the whole thing quickly for her.
Can everybody just say everything that we've said for the last? Yes, please.
That I Oh, wait.
Can you hear me now? Now you can hear me.
And you can hear me well? Great.
I was asked as an analyst of your session to summarize in three points the three key points you made.
The first is, I wrote that dense cities lack open spaces connected to nature, for children to learn from nature, your ideas around open schools, having more water parks, playgrounds, near schools, near homes, and access to the sky blue, green cities.
Then what is the concrete action from that is to make spaces connected to nature for children in cities.
This should be done by city municipalities because children have been spaced out of dense cities.
That's the first point.
The second point is around children's agency and consulting children, listening to children at schools in relation to the environments where they live, and So your point is that we must consult children because how do we know what they need if we don't ask them? How do we know what problems they face in school, if there is no one in their class to hear what they need? This very much relates to the point around respecting children, consulting children, respecting them, never being insulting, being open to listen to their ideas, their needs, and so on.
And so your recommendation is to consult with children, and this should be done with by various different actors, ministries of education when it comes to designing education programs, teachers and schools when understanding what children are going through in the classroom.
So it's really about this point around consultation.
The third point relates to children need everything, education, health care, safety, a home, a family, it's not any specific children, but it's all children, no matter where they come from, what they believe in, where they live.
It's for all children, all children, children with disabilities, children who are migrants.
You guys said all children.
We have to respect all children, not just some children.
Everybody has to be included.
It's around inclusion.
This only happens through collaboration.
Collaboration between the government, between city governments, between families, schools, the people, everyone.
This is all of society approach and all of government approach.
Does this summarize? Does everybody feel like their points have been included in these three points? Is there something I missed or I didn't hear correctly? This is a good point.
Much earlier.
I also just want to make the point that Sarah will be giving feedback now to the rest of the session, but Alena and I have been taking very detailed notes and we will be giving feedback from the session into the call to action.
Although Sarah's talking about three main things, that's just for the purpose of feedback to the session, all of the richness of this detail will definitely make it into our feedback into the call to action.
I don't want you to feel that anything that Sarah hasn't mentioned is not going to make it into the feedback from the session.
I'm just going to try to find out how much time we have left.
Oh, all right.
Does anybody have any Oh, this lady.
Yeah.
Previously you asked a question about how can we help children in cities in order to make them feel included.
My suggestion would be as a person speaking from an experience, I have tutored English classes to the students who have lost their fathers during the war, to the veteran students, to the martyr children, and also it wasn't of course me, it was a whole group of people who was tutoring different classes to those children.
The only model was giving something back to them whose fathers have done, whose parents have done for the society, for our country.
Also, I've worked in the Glasgow Science Center where the marginalized people from different backgrounds like asylum seekers, including children and the sick children who were cancer, they were coming to the center and they were trying to engage themselves in the science in the way that they did not know before.
We develop a sense that they can belong to the science and it is not something that they should be an expert in, but they can develop their understanding on it.
This is something I think we can do as young people to the children to help them to develop the understanding of the concepts that they necessarily don't know that they have an agency in or they haven't enough expertise in.
In this way, we can make them really feel included and a part of whatever we do.
Early.
Children have the capacity to learn.
Exactly.
We have to remind this capacity to them.
We're just waiting for the interview to end.
No.
So as you say, that misses taking notes about the, and you also about our ideas.
You report them to your manager or I don't know some officials working workers of this organization.
My question is related that are officials of this forum after it finished maybe next year, maybe I don't know some period travel to Azerbijan and to see whether neighborhoods meet the criteria meet the criteria of ideal urban planning or not, or if it's not meets criteria, do they encourage them or do they grant member states or it's just responsibility of the nation every government.
It's a really great question.
Do you have an answer to it? I was just going to say, I think you're talking about accountability and I think that.
You're talking about accountability, and I think that that's a really critical and interesting question.
In fact, the last session of this assembly today, I don't know whether the agenda has changed, is global mayors making affirmations, making undertakings, making promises to implement some of the ideas that we've been talking about.
But I think accountability needs to be part of our vision because even when there are international instruments and even when people make commitments to implement in certain ways, unless there are local voices and local lobbies who are advocating and holding accountable, I think it's much more difficult to be sustainable.
I don't think that I'm not sure what the accountability framework is for the World Word Urban Forum.
I think everybody is here, voluntarily.
Nobody is here because they've been told if you're not here, you're going to be in trouble.
I'm not sure what the the accountability framework is for this forum or for this conference, but I think that the most powerful accountability mechanism is all of us holding our own governments accountable to the types of commitments that we've been talking about.
Alene, please add.
Okay.
I think it's a really important question and it's something that was missing because our vision can be that governments take responsibility, but there is always a relationship between citizens and civil society and even the private sector and government and there is always mutual accountability.
I think that's a really important theme and thank you so much for raising that everyone Yes, thank you for supporting my idea because every participant, everyone expects a good result after the forum and everyone in fact is interested in the results of whether idea is put into practice or not.
Yes.
It's an important question because it's an expensive conference.
We've all traveled to be here.
We're all spending all this time and what happens afterwards is really something that it's useful for us to be thinking about from the beginning as participants as well.
We're all going to commit to each other.
We're going to hold our own governments accountable for We're moving towards one of the statements.
I'm not sure how the session finishes.
Can we take a take a before you go? All right.
I'm a consultant.
I work in Hasurg.
I run my own business, and I'm here as a civil society partner.
So I am the service provider to the UN, I've been working with center cities in Nairobi.
But here I'm just here as a partner, I do facilitate this is kind of my job, but what we've done today we take.
I feel a bit disrespectful, to be honest.
Shorter, but why don't you do something productive.
I want.
Police Detective coming up.
Thank you so much.
Colleagues and friends, I'm pretty sure that it has been a very exciting 1 hour of ma deliberations, of discussions, of sharing of lived experiences, your challenges, and your recommendations.
I would like in a very official way to invite you to the closing ceremony of this assembly.
And as we get into our seats, we would like to inform you that The closing sermon shall entail three parts, which includes getting to hear what you discussed and what your priorities are, getting to get the commitments, and finally, to get the final pledges from our Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Affairs, who has been with us all throughout this assembly.
So I'm requesting if we could all start taking seats, please.
Okay.
We are requesting everyone please to take your seats, please.
Kindly settle down to your seats.
We have 30 seconds, please to settle into your seats.
Excellent.
All right.
Thank you so much.
As mentioned earlier on, for the last 1 hour, the microphone has been on you.
In this juncture, we're going to be listening to what you discussed and what you recommended.
On stage, I would like to invite the Deputy Minister of youth and Sports of Azerbijan Mr.
Fahad, was the great honor to be with us right from the start of this assembly until right now.
Then the facilitator of these sessions, miss Jads, thank you so much and welcome.
Hi everyone.
Hi everyone.
This is now the last session where we'll have quite a bit of interaction with our honorable minister here, as well as yourselves.
I would like to invite the following facilitators of each of the groups.
So could I invite now S to come and join us and be seated? Can I please invite Joshua Forte to come and join us, Alen Rahbani, Victoria Chavez, and then we have last but not Sherry ends.
All good.
Kindly come and be seated, and then I'll hand over to Jonathan and then he'll take us through.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Gerard.
As mentioned earlier on, we are on the closing ceremony of this assembly today and want to the deputies excited to hear all the discussions that you had today and also your recommendations towards the forum itself and also to the leaders themselves and also the pledges that you've made as young people.
Just to remind you that at the end of this assembly, we shall have two activities.
The first one shall be having the group photo as young people, and also second one is that we shall have as many voices as possible being featured in our homes, our feature series that is documented that is being filmed by Brother Abengo.
Stay tuned and don't leave, please.
I want to give it back to yard so that he can lead in this segment.
Thank you so much and welcome, ad.
Thanks, Jonathan, for laying out the process from here.
What I'm going to do is now invite each lead of the sessions, and they will present the high level notes, the high level recommendations.
They will share it with us and they have three to maximum 4 minutes.
I will though, be very strict with time.
All right.
Can I please start with maybe I'll start with actually the last question.
We have the solution number five to Ale Rabani to share the high level conversations, discussion, recommendations that your team it was a very active and a lot of passionate conversations from your team.
So over to you.
Thank you.
Much better because we don't have a mi.
Thank you, Dati.
Hi, everyone.
It was such a privilege to be surrounded by young people with amazing ideas and creative endeavors who were able to draw a lot of beautiful pictures about how they imagined a city would be if it was a city where children are healthy and safe.
I invite you to drop by the safety Pavilion in the next few days so you can actually see those pictures and have a discussion around them.
I First, let me start with a sentence that struck me in this conversation.
The sentence was all children and all needs, every child, wherever they are in an inclusive way, should be able to access their basic rights and needs.
We need to play a role as international organizations, local organizations, local governments, national governments and making sure that we consult with the children a much better job at doing that than we're doing now.
We had some youth in our group who stressed the point on the youth engaging children and youth providing opportunities for children and their communities to be able to participate in the decisions that impact their lives.
There is a lot of density in urban environments and we are seeing more and more concrete and buildings and it's shrinking the nature and it's shrinking the public spaces where children can freely play in a safe way, and a free way, and they can connect to each other and they can overcome their diversities.
That was one of the main topics that was probably across all the smaller group discussions that we had.
And finally, let me talk a bit about accountability.
Everyone in this room and when we talk about the ecosystem of the child, Everyone is responsible for the well being of children from children taking agency to families, caregivers, protecting and for them to be able to protect their children and to provide for them, we should be also taking care of the caregivers and the parents.
Local governments, schools, ministries, national governments, we all need our collective effort to be able to make cities better for children and to break the cycle of structural inequality that is leading to the situation that we are facing today.
Thank you so much.
Well done, Arlene, 2.5 minutes only.
That's fantastic.
We did hear some concrete call for action and the honorable Minister here is noting those.
You are talking about youth playing a very important role with children in their neighborhoods.
You're talking about also the public spaces are shrinking, the place where they grow and live and express themselves and accountability, which is really an important who is accountable? Everyone is accountable for children's well being.
That's what the whole ecosystem needs to be needs to respond to this reality that we are all accountable to children's happiness and well being, their good upbringing is what will make the good citizenship is what we want an active participation of their work and their knowledge to shape the cities they want to live in.
On that note, let me thank you again.
On that note, I would like to invite Joshua Vote to the podium to share his conversations in his group.
Thank you.
So for our session, planning for prosperity was quite an engaging one with a lot of deep experiences that were shared.
Some of the key things that came out, first, let mention some of the countries that we had as part of our conversation were Zambia, Kenya, Eritrea, and Azerbijan of course, and my home country Barbados.
Some of the areas that we looked at were how the different policies and zoning were negatively affecting young people's ability to pursue the career that they want or to establish businesses or where you do have businesses starting, what is hindering it and not allowing those businesses to grow? So some of the things that were highlighted were chrono urbanism.
Situations where you have cities that are becoming way too concentrated and not the most efficient use of the existing infrastructure being implemented.
We looked at ways that say schools and other industrial buildings that already exist can be multi purpose.
You have schools during the day and entrepreneurship, startup hubs happening at night or out of school hours.
We looked also at 15 minute cities where you can have access to the resources that you need such as schooling, your business, medical services, transportation, all being within 15 minutes walking distance.
Then We looked at youth centered decision making, and accessibility.
One of the things that we notice is that even when initiatives are started and they include youth, they're not always centered around the youth in particular.
They are a part of the initial conversations, but the youth are not engaged throughout the entire decision making process or the implementation of these initiatives.
That's one of the critical aspects that we see where change needs to happen, where it needs to not only include youth from a consultation perspective, but have youth as part of the entire you know, end to end process.
Then when we look at accessibility with persons with disabilities, we notice that many cities around the world are actually losing out on a big proportion of their economic activity because it is not designed with persons with disabilities in mind and the different policy measures that need to go into place, you have to again, engage with those young people with disabilities and have them a part of that planning as well as a part of the implementation of these different types of initiatives so that we can see the change that we all want, which is more prosperity for our cities and communities.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Really, what stood out for me is schools serving infrastructure serving, multi purpose outcomes, and that is a critical one, especially with startups using all these from 5:00 onwards, all the schools are shut down and unused.
I used to say wasted space is wasted asset in a city.
I think this is a very critical point for our honorable minister also to consider institutionalization of youth participation, not just this tokenistic having them in critical times, but it's throughout the process.
How do we engage and ensure that they are truly included in the process of city planning and enhancing livability.
15 minutes neighborhoods, lot of initiatives, even where I live, Melbourne, there's a lot of work going on and in global South cities creating 15 minutes neighborhood.
It is a challenge though, but that's what we have to leave for planners and everyone else involved in city conversations to come up with realistic outcomes and realistic recommendations.
Thank you for these highlights.
It's been I think really interesting conversations when I came to your session as well.
The next person on my list is Sherri Es.
Can I invite you to now come and share your high level Thank you.
It's an honor and privilege to interact with youth and I thank my co chairs, there was two, as well as the person taking the technical notes and all who participated for a really engaging session.
First off, no one wanted to join our session, I guess because it's on finance.
This is a topic that's perhaps a bit more challenging, but we did have some really good joiners eventually and we needed to look at all the aspects that raise the cost of housing and that speaks to the supply that's built, it speaks to the policies and all the other issues you focused on, as well as climate changes as we listen to the ring now.
Um, but then we had a chance to dream the youth that were participating and those that were of different generations to dream about what housing could and should look like for youth.
I was fascinated to hear almost everyone spoke to the green element, the idea of a more circular system within the housing that respects the environment.
What surprised me a little bit was that almost everyone wanted space to work in their housing.
Um, so the idea of home and office coming together as well as flexible and modular housing and so on and so often those building houses, those deciding where housing goes, are not listening to youth, certainly in terms of the type of housing that could be built, even the willingness to share, collaborative or co housing.
In terms of the financial solutions, there were many different models and responses, but 12 that I think are interesting, obviously, pooled savings groups.
This works well in Nepal as our co facilitators were sharing, as well as linking green housing to climate finance, which is more at a higher government level or even to pension funds as well, looking at innovative micro loans as a response beyond government programs.
I think I'll stop at that.
Thank you, Chris.
It was a little bit embarrassing that we had to request people to come.
I know that people will not really show what you were discussing, but I think I'm really delighted to hear that it was an interesting conversation, especially when I was visiting your session, your Nepal colleagues were talking very passionately about what they feel.
I do believe that the blended hybrid model for homes is so relevant not just for work life balance, but also for climate environment well being and that young people could dream about new ways, reimagine what their homes would be and serve multi purpose is what was very interesting for me to also hear when I stopped by.
Thank you for sharing these.
I would like to invite now Chico to share high level points from his session, which was the first solution lab.
Over to you, Sicer.
Well, good afternoon once again, everyone.
Actually, today, when we speak about cities, the conversation can no longer only focus on infrastructure, skylines, or economic growth.
The real question is, are our cities truly livable for people and especially for children and young people? That was exactly what our discussion title was, the pathways for livability.
A livable city is not simply a developed city.
It is a city where people can move safely, access opportunities, feel connected to their communities, and live with dignity and well being.
This is what the first part of discussion that reflected.
From the perspective shared in our discussion, several important elements make cities livable.
These include safe and uninterrupted mobility, access to quality healthcare, affordable and reliable public transport, quality education, decent employment opportunities, affordable housing, and safe public spaces.
Livable cities also prioritize greenery, environmental sustainability, recreation, cultural life, and stronger community connections.
Children and young people, especially envision cities that are walkable, inclusive, climate resilient, and human centered.
Cities designed their own people rather than cities cars and commercial expansion.
At the same time, many cities around the world are becoming increasingly difficult to live in.
Traffic congestion, pollution, poor waste management, rising housing costs, unsafe public spaces, weak public transport systems, and climate related disasters continue to affect urban life.
In many places, unplanned urbaniation and growing inequality are making cities more exclusionary and stressful, particularly for vulnerable communities.
When cities fail to provide clean air, safe mobility, affordable services, or space for participation, and recreation, they stop responding to everyday realities of people.
However, despite these challenges, children and young people around the world already contributing powerful solutions to improve urban life.
Young people are leading environmental campaigns, promoting sustainable mobility, organizing waste management initiatives, redesigning public spaces, supporting resilient efforts, and creating digital tools.
There are growing examples of youth led urban youth councils, community cleanup campaigns, climate adaption projects, and many more.
Important challenge remains, many youth initiatives struggle to become institutionalized within formal governance and policy systems.
This means some of the major barriers include limited resources and funding, weak coordination among institutions, lack of political will, short term planning approaches, and insufficient institutional capacity.
I think to finally conclude, what is the vision of a livable city for children and young people? I'm borrowing 10 seconds.
It is a city that is smart, inclusive, safe, affordable, climate resilient, and caring.
It is a city with fewer barriers and more opportunities.
It is a city where public spaces are welcoming, mobility is accessible, services are equitable and delivery is respected, diversity is respected.
Most importantly, it is a city where children and young people are heard, trusted, and included as equal partners in shaping urban futures.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Skar.
There's no need for me to summarize anything.
I think the Honorable Minister heard it.
All the social determinants of health and well being of communities and not just children and youth for all.
Thanks.
My last but not least speaker is Victoria Chavez.
Can I just invite you to come and share your high level? Thank you.
Well, to add a little bit to that as well, I think in our group, we discussed a bit the how? How can we achieve these livable cities if we don't know what young people think, experience, and want? It happens a lot when we talk about evidence, about building evidence together, that there's really a lot of information that the city doesn't hold.
We had the task to explore the question, how do we breach that collaboration and how do we make it a structural? Particularly thinking and the way we started is discussing why.
Because we need to align on why we need this information or what is the information that is missing in our data to understand how to act, how to achieve those cities that we're looking for, particularly for young people, for children, for families.
A lot of that end up being in our discussions perceptions, preferences.
In many cases, we cannot disaggregate by age, understanding that a 5-year-old has very different needs at a 15-year-old.
We need that information to really make decisions and we need to be aligned that reasoning and why we need that data in order to start building systems that assure that we will use it structurally.
We talked a lot also about the barriers.
We need to understand why this hasn't happened yet.
A lot of the barriers in our discussion were presented in terms of transparency.
Maybe youth wants to know more in how decisions are being made.
Also another barrier supposes the channels.
Maybe the channels are either not there, not existing, or not engaging enough for people to participate.
How can we think around those channels of engagement better? And lastly also talked a lot about the opportunities.
We talked a lot about the intersection of youth and technology.
The youth and social media platforms and how that can actually help us reach a diversity of voices, acknowledging that there's sometimes very few voices that make it into participatory spaces.
How can we then expand and reach more? Well, we have technology at hand to help us and support in that way.
We talked also a lot about tools, as someone mentioned, multi level surveys.
But something that was very interesting someone brought also was how then we engage in dialogue? Because it's not just about the information that comes up, it's about also the information that goes down and the dialogue and the questions and the discussions that that brings to the table.
Lastly, and probably the most interesting point for me in the discussion was that we talked a Al about intergenerational knowledge exchange.
It's not just youth, is all of us, intergenerational in terms of who maybe is in the position of power and decision to talk to youth back and forth, but also thinking about the institutional actors and that exchange that can generate with people that is in different sectors and institutions.
Really thinking about making the explicit invitation to talk and dialogue together was probably one of the key reasons when we are starting to talk more about youth as building evidence, but it's building evidence in that discussion, not in an isolated space.
Thank you.
This was such an important conversation and a really important topic, youth as evidence builders and youth as knowledge sharers.
They're the ones living in the city, observing their city.
They're the ones, interacting so much with different players and stakeholders.
Day to day in their day to day walking to the school, coming back, shopping, meeting, playing football, there is so much knowledge and observational knowledge that they hold.
This is what I would like to say that what you are bringing in is the call for democratization of technology to get diversity of voices, to inform and allow young people to be evidence generators.
That was, I think a powerful conversation that you were having and it's really important to hear that and the intergenerational knowledge exchange.
I love that.
I think this is what we should be really calling for.
This is a critical call for action.
From this, especially from this assembly.
On that note, I would like to thank every lead of each of the sessions for their hard work, but all of you who have contributed to this knowledge and to these conversations and the points and the recommendations that we have heard and thank you very much for your passionate participation and for the leaders to be able to bring it all together as subject matter experts to pull it all together and share with us.
We thank them and please keep seated.
I will invite Jonathan now to come to the podium here and there you are, Jonathan, and lead us to the next session.
Thank you.
Thank you once more, and it's a great pleasure to get to listen to all your recommendations that are honestly futuristic, realistic, actionable, scalable, but above all intentional.
Thank you so much to every one of you.
And at this juncture, allow me to speak to the Deputy Minister, and I want to thank you so much for hosting us in this beautiful Baku and also for hosting this assembly, but above all, for attending this assembly right from the start.
Of its formation until its actualization and right from the beginning of this assembly until right now.
It means a lot to us as young people, getting to get a leader who wants to interact with us, wants to listen to us, and above all, who spends much of his time with us.
It should be a reflection to other leaders to be listening and to be intentional with young people across because young people shouldn't be speaking amongst ourselves and to us ourselves.
It should be that young people should speak to everyone.
Including leaders.
Because these leaders, after all these recommendations, these are the same same leaders who are supposed to implement our recommendations.
Thank you so much to the Deputy Minister.
This means a lot to us and maybe we can appreciate it.
Thank you.
At this point, allow me to welcome the Deputy Minister of Youth and ports of the government of Azerbijan to make his closing remarks for this assembly.
Thank you and welcome, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you, dear Jonathan, dear friends.
For me, it's really an honor to be among you among these bright young people.
It's not only obligation, also it's a pleasure, frankly speaking and listening all these presentations regarding, I can call it this cities of the future.
I went back to my childhood and all what you said reminded when I was a child, I was born in another city, which is a satellite city of Baku.
It's not the capital.
And regarding infrastructure, which is like 15 minutes away, I used to travel almost like 2 hours a day for getting to university and then go back.
But when I was a child, our school was next to our building, and I spent 10 minutes to the school.
So this is how life changed up as far as you are becoming like when we are student, when we are just as school pupil or So every step of our life, every term of our life has its own opportunities and obligations.
But what I heard today and what I can say that can be pledged of our meeting, this is the youth participation, I see.
Every decision is taking should also have some youth voice.
Because young people knows better what they want and any government when they take decision, I think they should work alongside with the young people and then young people will get what they want.
This is, I think, should be the key message from today's discussions from all the group.
Of course, cities should be safe.
Children should grow up in healthy environment.
The infrastructure should be relevant.
The most important opportunities for young people to develop should be accessible for all.
As I said in my opening speech, that talent shouldn't be lost in in the lack of opportunities.
Opportunities should be equal to every young person because every young person is talented by him or herself.
So as far as I understood, we should transfer our message also to Mexico to our next meeting in 2028.
I think that the the message should be to the government, to the decision makers that they should take young people more seriously and they should take their voice on board also.
They should listen to them and step alongside with them.
This is the most important moment, I think, of our gathering here.
And you see a lot of young people around from all over the world.
I think the voice of young people we can't say that the voice are heard everywhere equally.
No, it's not like this.
It's heard differently.
But coming from the perspective of my own country, I can say that young people has really have voice.
The young people of Azerbijan they have voice.
As I said in the beginning, we are now building nine cities from zero.
And all these nine cities are absolutely relevant for young people to leave because they are considered as a new cities of future.
Cities where young people should live because 85,000 people move to these post conflict areas and they live and develop in this area.
We are happy that they find themselves in these cities and they find opportunities to live there.
Can you imagine when you go to the to the city, which is just standing up without any infrastructure, young people want, entertainment, education, sport opportunities and et cetera and they move with the perspective to have all this on the place.
That's why the government take all these measures to make these new cities also relevant for the life of young people.
Then I'm happy that I that I'm a part of this process.
As a minister of sport and youth, we are providing these opportunities for young people to move to this city to study.
We just established new university.
News, absolutely new schools are built now with all relevant opportunities to develop for young people.
So I can speak a lot, but I'm really very excited and I'm happy that I'm here.
Thank you very much for having us till the end.
It is, as I said, a big honor for me.
I would like to say big thanks to our facilitator, to our leaders of the group, to UN habitat staff which are with us.
B thanks to our young volunteers who are really fighting with the weather and being with us all the day.
So I Of course, big thanks to our young leaders who are gathering here and discuss the future, not only their own future, but the future of next generation because whatever we do, we do it as for the future and for now because young people are leaving now also, not only in the future.
Thank you very much.
It is a big honor for me and I'm really very happy that we had such a nice discussions and good message for the future generations.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
From the beginning of this assembly, we promised you one thing that this assembly will be about you and your voice.
At this moment, picking it up from the powerful intervention from the minister, we want to give it back to you, one gent and one lady to give you a reflection about this assembly under 2 minutes.
It's going to be very random to any young person in the room to come on stage, give your reflection about this assembly and your message to other young people and leaders out there.
I know this was very random.
Thank you so much.
Welcome.
Salam Hakisa.
Salam Haisa means in Azerbijani.
Hello, everyone.
I am Savilajn A.
I am Sabella Azinal young architect and urbanist specialist.
I am so happy for being here with you and I am so thankful to our ministry for creating that chance for youngs like us.
It's my first moderator experience, but I'm really grateful they trust us and they give us a chance like that for saying our speech in front of a great young leaders.
So I Welcome everyone to our country.
I hope you really liked our country and Azerbijan My reflections about this session is we talked about Aness, accessibility, the 15 minute cities from urbanism, which means a great urbanism.
I don't want to go into details, but I'm really grateful to be here and I'm really grateful to be with you and working with you.
It's such an honor for me.
Thank you to everyone being here and I hope we can meet in future also in the projects like this and we can see the results of our discussing.
I believe that.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Well, Excellent.
Thank you so much, Avila.
I have to mention that she's such a great young person who has been very inspirational to most of other young people in this country.
Thank you so much and thank you for your sweet words.
I would like to pass it again now two other young leaders randomly, anyone? Wow.
You reflection about the assembly and then your message to other young people.
Perfect.
Good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for your time and your substantive interventions.
Thank you.
I'm Evelindmbo from Kenya and also Staff action habitat.
I'm very passionate about youth and inclusion, and I'm happy that we are slowly getting the space to voice our needs and to voice our perspectives.
My key takeaway today is that nobody will do it for us, nobody should say it on our behalf.
It's us, for us, and for the world.
Thank you.
Such a sweet way to end it.
Nobody going to come to save us.
It's about us, for us, to the world.
Thank you so much, A for that, and it's a great one.
Before we wrap it up, is there someone? The final one? All right.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Shari Laban, and I'm so grateful for all of you here that you came from different countries, and it's a great opportunity for all of us that we gather together and we're discussing some global issues that are that are big issues and we are discussing it as a young people.
And in our countries, we face these problems and sometimes people just don't pay attention to these problems because they're so obvious and sometimes people are scared to express their opinion.
But the policymakers should know about these global issues and together we can build a better world.
Thank you for the Ministry of o and Sports for creating such a great gathering of all of us.
So thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for your sweet words.
Thanks everyone.
I would like us to surprisingly, again, two more spaces for young people to make it for the five groups.
What do you think? Two more young people.
Feel free to stand up.
Feel free to have your voice heard to the world.
This is the perfect opportunity for you to speak to the leader exam.
Thanks.
Welcome.
Thank.
Hello, everyone.
First of all, I want to thank you for participating here.
I know it's a bit surprising for myself too because we get shy when it comes to speaking up, but it matters when you have the opportunity to grasp it and make your voice be heard.
I want to thank the government for providing this opportunity for everyone to share their voices.
It matters that we express them.
We shouldn't be shy from experiencing our problems with our own voices.
This is the problem, I think, in my own opinion, that we don't have enough opportunity to state what really matters for us in our daily life.
I think what was really surprising for me, everyone here had their own opinion, which was really true and right.
We can say no one here is oblivious to what's really happening around the world.
It's about taking action right now.
Everyone knows what needs to be done and what we really need right now is to take action and put it into work.
Thank you.
I love it thatsly speak it up when you are very unsure about what you're going to speak, you just speak up.
If you feel like you're very afraid, you just still do it regardlessly, because most of the people do shy off from the actions and that a small action means a lot to the world.
Thank you so much for that.
The very final opportunity, please.
Yes, welcome.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Faith Aworadyo from Nairobi, Kenya, and I'm glad to be here today.
It's beautiful that ladies are taking these spaces and it's so nice that we are really showing up for ourselves.
I'm proud of everybody that has shown up today.
I'm proud of the beautiful speakers and the meaningful engagements we've heard today.
Mine is to emphasize that moving forward, let's make all these ideology come to reality.
Thank you for giving us opportunity as young women and as youth.
Thank you so much.
I love it.
And indeed, it's time for us to go back to the push for gender equality and more empowerment.
I don't know this time with what kind of gender.
Thanks.
I want to give it the final opportunity to a young person with disability to represent the young people who are differently abled.
It's a great pleasure to welcome our beautiful lady.
Thanks.
Appreciate us Thank.
Yeah.
Thank you, everyone.
My name is Sandra era from the United Disabled Persons of Kenya, which is the Federation of Organizations of Persons with Disabilities.
And given that, I represent young persons with disabilities in this sitting.
For us, our key takeaway and what I'd want to remind all of us is the importance of intersectionality.
We're all here talking about children and young people, but that remember these children, the young people have different identities, and at times, I'm Um, those different identities can compound and actually exacerbate the barriers that children and young people face.
With this and has been mentioned, I think once or twice, the whole aspect around integrating accessibility, universal design, reasonable accommodation, and most importantly, lived experience of persons with disabilities and the representative organizations is very key when having all of these discussions.
Thank you.
Thank Again, inclusion.
Yes, inclusion.
We are going to be pushing for children and youth.
Let us ensure that we are in the inclusion aspect is well catered for right from our neighborhoods, to our homes, to our cities, and to the whole world, inclusion.
Thank you so much, Sandra, for that.
I want to give it back to ad for a couple of minutes right now to do the pledges amongst ourselves before we wrap it up.
Thank you so much and we should be winding up shortly.
Thanks.
Thank you, Jonathan.
I have this last couple of minutes to engage with you all.
Apparently, do we have given you leaflets and there's a QR code there.
And if I can ask everyone, request everyone to scan that and submit their commitments, whatever you feel, whichever sector you're coming from, whatever group you're representing, it'll be good to have your voice represented as a participating member here, committing to a pledge that you would like to take and continue advocating for so we can then have a bit of an interacting conversation also with the minister honorable minister here.
If I can just ask everyone to get to Jonathan, am I right? Yeah.
Everyone's got the leaflets.
Would we get? Yes.
Perfect.
Are we ready? Yeah.
Okay.
So everyone kind of got an opportunity to say, commit, right a few things.
This is the last 1 minute or so.
I would like to invite a couple of people to talk about what have they pledged so that the honorable minister can hear the different pledges coming from the floor.
Who would like to go first? I'm going to go this way.
Who's going from there? Anyone with a pledge that they would like to share? Or is anyone ready this side? Yes.
We need.
And then I would request someone from the middle also to get ready so we can have three speakers.
The lady here.
Let's see.
Yes.
Go ahead, Savila.
I want to finish my ideas.
This code is urbanist James Jacobs.
Cs have the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only when they are created by everybody.
Here we created the city models together and that's why the cities will work.
Thank you forever.
Thank you.
Who's going to be the next speaker? Hello.
My name is Camilla and I represent NAM organization.
As a managing research center, I would like to pledge that I will research more about financing and investing in intergeneration affordability because I learned so many terms and for me, they're new.
I want to learn more and more and to see what we can do in our country in Azerbaijan as well.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
Thank you so much.
That's great.
One last voice from the floor.
Anyone? Middle? Yes.
Go ahead.
Thank you so much for organizing such a great event and appreciate that you support different people with disabilities and also next time we should invite more children participate in this organization.
That's a good event so the children can speak up and express their own opinions, and we have to listen to them more and looking forward for next event.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Perfect.
Thank you all for participating.
Thank you all for sharing your ideas and voices and thoughts, your lived experiences in all the different sessions, making it such a rich conversation for us to take on board.
I just want to conclude this session before I hand over to my friend Jonathan to take us to the close is the process from here.
It is not just one this assembly that we are all coming together and that's it.
After this, it is finished and everyone goes their own way.
It is actually a whole process during this whole week.
We will continue to work with all of you whenever possible and we will be inviting you to collaborate and continue to contribute to the process of producing this youth declaration that will inform the Baku call for action.
What we are going to do is the working on seeking solutions will continue and we will be hosting some of these sessions during the youth Pavilion, which will start from Tuesday onwards.
So I hope all of you have signed off to the mailing list, all the youth participants, young people, as well as those who are here in this room.
So we are able to send you the different sessions of consultation that will continue.
We will continue to build on your ideas and on Thursday or Friday, we will have a pitching session.
We will host a pitching session.
My dear colleague and wonderful young leader Shamoy Hazara will be in touch and she will host a pitching session for us in the youth Pavilion.
So on that note, stay tuned and thank you very much for this opportunity from UN Habitat to invite me to be a facilitator.
I've really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Dear friends, the Children and Youth Assembly of this year, the 13th session of the World Urban Forum comes to a close right now.
I would like to have a very genuine personal conversation with each and every person going to be listening to these.
Either you in this room right now or probably you just watching us from usual comfort of your house because of a lot of issues you couldn't join us here in Baku.
From the start, allow us to appreciate the media team for the visibility.
You've made it so smooth for us.
Thank you so much.
The IT team, thank you for making everything run so auspiciously so far.
W, it means the world to us.
Thank you so much.
And again to the beautiful young volunteers who have spent most of their time to ensure that we have our comfort.
Thank you so much and God bless you.
And to the speakers who have spent tireless nights to work on their speeches, to cross their T's, and also to dot their's to ensure that they're working on various segments.
Thank you so much and we've learned a lot to you.
But above all, we're excited about the young people, the young leaders, the young innovators, the young change makers who made this assembly very lively, very inspirational, very interactive, but above all, very impactful.
Thank you so much to every one of you.
But again, as Jared mentioned, we are not ending it here.
As from Tuesday we are having the children and youth Pavilion happening, please join us over there because we have more activities being done over them.
Whatsoever that you've learned today in this room today, let us not leave it behind.
Let us take it out to our institutions, let us take it out to our neighborhoods, let's take it out to our cities.
Let us change this world together because we got the opportunity to do it.
If we meet outside there during the tea breaks, during the during the bs, during other engagements of the forum, please let us continue this conversation thereof.
Finally, the great Francisco once mentioned that any city that is made for the children is safe for everyone.
Let us ensure that whatsoever we push for is a city that is child centered, but above all, a city that prioritizes the actions of young people.
Thank you so much.
With that one, just two announcements, the first one is that if you have passion in making if you want to do sketching through artificial intelligence, reach out to doctor Sherry.
She's right second from the right.
She will of course exchange contacts and get to know how you can do that amazing work.
Finally, we are having our group photo as the attendees of the Children and Youth Assembly, which shall be lining up just in full.
So, just in front of the podium.
And after that one, our brother Aber Nagel and the team shall be leading the interaptive session of our homes, our futures, which has been our theme so that at the end of it all, we shall have an amazing documentary that we believe each and every one of you will get hold of and showcase the world what you young people are doing.
Remember that these present and the future belongs to you, the young person.
So shape it as you want it.
Thank you so much and see you soon.
Thank.