The Youth 7 2024 Communique has been published! With the Y7 Summit finally behind us, we want to bring you an in-depth look into all of the work that our delegates took part in throughout the four day summit.
The conference began with an introduction by the Foreign Minister of Italy, Antonio Tajani, who spoke elegantly about the role of youth in the future of Europe and the world. He was followed by Andrea Abodi, Minister for Sport and Youth of Italy, with a final speech delivered by Qu Dongyu, Director General of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Following these introductions, each individual delegation was allowed to present their policy proposals to the government leaders of Italy, and to express the policies that they would be advocating for during the conference. You can find the speeches by the ministers as well as for all of the Y7 delegations here.
Throughout the other days of the summit, the delegates interacted with panels of experts dealing with all four tracks at the Y7, and continued to negotiate and finalize the work in their tracks which they had begun all the way back in January. As part of this process, our delegates would meet with the EU Delegation in Rome to share their policies and priorities with EU authorities to deliberate on the work that was being done during negotiations.
On the final day of the summit, the final communique would be presented to the Mayor of Rome and the Italian Sherpa to the G7 as part of an effort to express the will of the youth of the G7 to the leaders responsible for implementing the policies sought by youth. This final version will also be presented to the leaders of the EU, Italy, France, Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, and the US at the G7 Summit in Puglia, Italy from June 13-15th. We encourage these leaders to pay close attention to the desires of young people as they are the change makers of this work. As the future generations, our voices matter, and through forums such as the Y7 we can express our concerns to those that govern us in the hope that we can address the issues faced by our generation.
We thank our Y7 delegates for all the work that they have done thus far, and for all of the work that they will continue to do for the duration of this year as they engage in a process of dissemination for the work that they have accomplished. We look forward to passing the torch to our Y20 delegation, who will continue much of the work done at the Y7 this year at their own summit in August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.