ENGAGEMENT
MOVES FOOD
FORWARD

Little attention has been paid to youth aged 15–17, who belong to both the children (0–17) and youth age groups.ⁱ This cohort is characterized by specific biological, developmental and legal characteristics that distinguish them from older youth and adults. Biologically, youth aged 15–17 are in the later part of adolescence, a crucial stage of physical and cognitive development, characterized by biological growth and social transitions.^{ii, iii} Individuals from this group have reached legal working age (set at 14 years old in some countries, and 15 or 16 years old in most countries) and can be in employment.^i,iv,v T hey often face conflicting expectations and frequently engage in work that may be inappropriate for their age or development while lacking corresponding rights, voice or access to resources, which places them at heightened risk of involvement in child labour, particularly its worst forms.^iv According to ILO Conventions Nos. 138 and 182, if they are involved in hazardous work, these youth are considered to be in a situation of child labour,v,vi which can have longterm negative implications for employment and health outcomes.^{i, vii}

Thirty-five million youth aged 15–17, representing 9.5 percent of this cohort, are in a situation of child labour and hazardous work.^viii Agriculture is more prone to hazardous work^ix and employs 47.6 percent of all youth aged 15–17 in hazardous work.^viii Children face a wide array of hazards and risks in the sector, including exposure to chemicals and extreme weather and temperatures, handling of dangerous tools and machinery, strenuous physical work, with heavy loads and repeated movements, or working with certain animals.^{i, viii} The prevalence of child labour and hazardous work among youth aged 15–17 occurs more often in low- and lower-middle-income countries,^viii where youth below the age of 18 generally work as contributing family workers in agriculture.^{iv, viii}

Youth in child labour^vii and hazardous work^viii are less likely to be attending school or completing graduation. Besides the inherent health and physical and cognitive development risks associated with hazardous work, lower school attendance can eventually compromise children and youth’s potential to build required professional skills and hamper future employment outcomes.^vii The toll taken on youth’s health and education can reduce their skills and productivity, further affecting their livelihoods and hampering the capacity of agrifood systems to ensure sustainable future food production.^iv

Youth aged 15–17 face multiple challenges which heighten their vulnerability to hazardous forms of work and constrain their capacity to safely engage with agrifood systems. Compared to older youth (18–24), this cohort lacks the financial autonomy and legal capacity to own or access assets required for productive engagement in agrifood systems (see Chapter 3). For instance, evidence shows that they are less likely to own or access land, non-land and political assets than older youth.x Combined with their limited education, the lack of alternative productive and decent employment opportunities in rural areas often constrain youth aged 15–17 to work in subsistence agriculture or take up poor quality and low-paid jobs in off-farm segments of agrifood systems.iv Enforcement of child labour laws is also particularly challenging,vii, viii even more so in remote areas.i Data on the activities youth perform in agriculture and the related conditions are scarce, limiting the capacity to monitor and identify situations of child labour and hazardous work for this cohort

Different patterns emerge as to girls’ and boys’ vulnerability to child labour and hazardous work in agriculture and broader agrifood systems. Child labour and hazardous work is more prevalent among boys than girls within the 15–17 age cohort (12.2 percent against 6.6 percent, respectively).^vii They typically engage in different activities. Boys tend to be more involved in hazardous agricultural work, including heavier work in the field and work with livestock, while girls tend to engage in activities that are closer to the family home, including postharvest activities involving smaller livestock and the marketing of agricultural products.^iv

Girls are also more likely to be engaged in household chores in their own homes.^{xi, xiv} These “invisible” tasks are not always included in the definition of child labour but increase their overall work burden.^viii Cultural norms in many regions constrain girls’ mobility and limit their access to education, thereby reducing their opportunities for formal agricultural training and decent employment. Adolescent girls and young women, in particular, often face compounded barriers, including heightened risks of physical and emotional violence, discrimination and harassment, which further marginalize their participation in the agrifood sector.^xv

Promoting safe work in agrifood systems for youth aged 15–17

Agrifood system employment remains critical for youth aged 15–17, especially in countries at the earlier stages of agrifood systems transition. Ensuring that youth aged 15–17 can access legal, non-hazardous work is thus critical, including for the sustainability of agrifood systems.^iv Protection of youth aged 15–17 from hazardous work in agrifood systems can be achieved through multiple approaches, targeting individual workers, their households and broader rural areas. First, young workers in agrifood systems should be protected from hazardous working conditions. For instance, promoting sustainable agricultural practices and labour-saving technologies can help reduce youth’s exposure to agrochemicals and dangerous equipment.ⁱ, ^iv Nonstate actors-based monitoring systems can also help identify situations of child labour in more remote areas and the informal economy.^viii Second, targeted efforts should aim at reducing youth’s likelihood to engage in hazardous work. Supporting their education and sector-specific skills training can help youth access decent and more productive jobs.^iv In the same vein, interventions supporting rural and agricultural households can help reduce their likelihood to resort to child labour. Evidence shows that interventions combining livelihood and education support, such as in Peru,^xvi or food-for-education programmes, such as in Burkina Faso,^xvii can help reduce child labour in agricultural households. Third, broader investments and rural development policies (including in basic infrastructure, health and education) that aim to generate decent, quality and remunerative work opportunities are also essential. Besides offering decent alternatives to hazardous work to youth aged 15–17, both in and outside agrifood systems, prospects of better-quality jobs will encourage families to prioritize long-term youth education and training over child labour generated income.^iv

Notes: Refers to the Notes section for full citations.

Forty-five percent of the world’s estimated 476 million Indigenous Peoples are between 15 and 30 years of age.ⁱ While Indigenous Peoples constitute approximately 6.2 percent of the global population, with the majority living in middle-income countries, some sources place them among the most economically poor, representing more than 19 percent of the extreme poor.ⁱ It is important to note that for many Indigenous Peoples around the world, across the seven sociocultural regions, their ways of life are intricately connected to food and knowledge systems embedded within the diverse ecosystems of their territories and homelands, and not necessarily measured by economics and labour. For Indigenous Peoples, including Indigenous Youth, food is more than just eating – food carries nutritional, medicinal, healing, spiritual, social, cultural, relational and emotional dimensions and values. ⁱⁱ From an economics perspective, many Indigenous Peoples are dependent on agrifood systems for their livelihoods: the ILO estimates that 55 percent of Indigenous Peoples work in agriculture (compared to 27 percent in the non-Indigenous population). There is little to no disaggregated data available for Indigenous Youth by occupation.ⁱⁱⁱ

Despite this lack of data, there is an increasing emphasis on documenting the important role that Indigenous Youth play in protecting and advocating for Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems, the conservation of biodiversity, climate change adaptation, ecological restoration and food systems transformation in their communities. Indigenous Youth also actively participate in global forums including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) and the UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum (UNGIYF). As with food, Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Youth protect and prioritize biodiversity for its importance not just for their livelihoods but also for cultural, spiritual and symbolic reasons.^iv

Additionally, interest is growing in better measuring and assessing the extent to which Indigenous Peoples, including Indigenous Youth, work in “traditional occupations”, many of which are related to agrifood systems, such as hunting, gathering (including plants for both food and medicine), herding, fishing and aquaculture, pastoralism, cultivation, farming, beekeeping, forestry, the production of handicrafts (e.g. weaving, basketry, pottery, carving), and the preparation and storage of foods.^v Such “traditional occupations” are intrinsically connected to the characteristics and collective stewardship required to sustain their food systems and territorial management. According to FAO’s White/Wiphala Paper on Indigenous Peoples’ food systems,ⁱⁱ “Indigenous Peoples’ food systems consist of both food generation and food production, and different Indigenous Peoples’ communities may participate in food generative and productive activities to differing extents”.ⁱⁱ

Within these traditional occupations in agrifood systems, young Indigenous Peoples also play important roles in innovating, changing and adapting practices. For example, in Thailand, Indigenous Youth combined work with traditional agricultural practices with an innovative business model to create a community-based social enterprise.^vi In the Philippines, youth members of the Lake Sebu Indigenous Women and Farmers Association advanced a project to make and sell banana chips during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent food loss and waste due to interrupted supply chains. The bananas used were native species, which had greater resilience to climate change. This project increased and diversified income for youth and their families, while incorporating sustainable practices and promoting biodiversity.^vii

Many Indigenous Youth around the world are under increasing pressure to relocate to urban centres for reasons including economic opportunities or displacement. In spite of this, many Indigenous Youth are finding ways to remain connected with their cultures and food systems. For example, Indigenous Youth from the Anishnaabeg community in Canada demonstrated that rather than representing a loss of cultural traditions, their rural–urban mobility for work and education has helped finance traditional activities such as hunting, trapping, fishing and plant collection.^viii Additional examples from Northern America reveal Indigenous Youth sustaining and revitalizing their food and knowledge systems in both rural and urban areas, while protecting ecosystems through the cultivation and use of native species in culinary and production businesses, ranching, wild harvesting, fishing and hunting ^{ix, x, xi}. In Alaska, Indigenous Youth are collaborating with remote Native villages, planting food and native species to stabilize melting permafrost, and increase local food production and access to affordable, nutritious food.^xii

In consultations held during the 2023 UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum and at World Food Forums since 2021, more than 200 Indigenous Youth leaders from across the seven sociocultural regions have shared initiatives they are leading to support Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems.^xiii Indigenous Youth from across Central and South America and the Caribbean are working to preserve and protect varieties of seeds and plant genetic resources through cultivation based on the milpa system. In the Amazon basin of Ecuador, Indigenous Youth are creating their own alternative economies founded on the plants, foods and medicines of their region. In Mexico, Indigenous Youth and Women face encroachment on their agricultural and grazing lands from wind projects and are advocating for Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in relation to green energy projects.^xiv

Indigenous Youth of the Ogiek People in Kenya and the Hunter-Gatherer Peoples in the Congo Basin are advocating to retain access to their homelands and sustain their traditional systems of forestry. Indigenous Youth in Botswana, Namibia and the United Republic of Tanzania are combating desertification and drought by applying new pastoralism approaches, restoring grasslands and planting small gardens for mobile schools.^{xv, xvi} Indigenous Youth of the Kal Tamashek in Burkina Faso are identifying ways to sustain their nomadic livelihoods with livestock and wild harvests in the face of desertification and political violence.^xvii

Saami Youth across Scandinavia are actively engaged in protecting grazing lands for their reindeer herds and are finding ways to sustain their mobile livelihoods despite encroachment and climate change impacts.^xviii Indigenous Youth in the Arctic regions of Alaska, the United States of America and Nunavut, Canada are studying arctic marine life with the aim of sustaining traditional hunting, whaling and fishing practices in sustainable ways.^xix

Indigenous Youth in Arctic regions of the Russian Federation are also working to maintain their food systems, which are rooted in hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, despite territorial challenges and climate change.^xx In the North Caucasus, Indigenous Youth are collaborating with Indigenous chefs and food historians to learn about and share traditional foods and preservation practices.^xxi

In the Pacific, Indigenous Youth in Vanuatu and other small island nations are encouraging their communities to cultivate traditional varieties of foods using Indigenous practices, in order to increase food security and nutritional health.^xxii In the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, Indigenous Youth are working together with Elders and the local government to monitor and sustain Indigenous fisheries and sustainable practices.^xxiii Similarly, Indigenous Youth across Australia are working alongside Elders to sustain their Indigenous food and knowledge systems, re-establish connections and reacquire lost knowledge.^xxiv In Hawaii, young Kanaka Oiwi (Native Hawaiians) are revitalizing fishponds and restoring Indigenous food and knowledge systems linked to “ahupua’a” watersheds.^xxv Indigenous Youth in New Zealand are working to reconnect with their traditional whenua (lands) and restore spaces for cultivation.^xxvi

While Indigenous Youth are leading initiatives around the world to protect, preserve and revitalize Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems in the broader context of agrifood systems, there is a lack of disaggregated and published data on their initiatives. This data gap is slowly being addressed.

One way to better understand the access and opportunities open to Indigenous Youth is to analyse employment data, although the variations in these data are depending on region and national context. Data from two industrial agrifood systems with large populations of Indigenous Peoples – Australia and the United States of America – demonstrate significant gaps. In Australia, the employment rate in 2021 for Indigenous Youth was 44 percent compared to approximately 60 percent for non-Indigenous Youth. Additionally, 42 percent of Indigenous Youth are not in employment, education or training (NEET). These outcomes are due in part to the challenges that Indigenous Youth and adults face in Australia, including discrimination, disproportionately high rates of incarceration, disparities in the educational system, and lack of access to training and long-term job opportunities, as well as the absence of mentorship for Indigenous Youth seeking employment.^xxvii

Data from the United States of America (2016) show similar patterns, with unemployment higher for Indigenous Youth aged 20–24 years (24 percent) than for any other ethnic group, and greater for Indigenous Youth aged 16–19 (27 percent) than for all groups except black youth (32 percent). In both cohorts, the unemployment rate for Indigenous Youth is significantly higher than for white youth (19 percent among ages 16–19 and 9 percent for ages 20–24). In the United States of America, 19 percent of young farm workers aged 14–19 were Indigenous (compared to 2 percent for the population overall), and 6 percent spoke an Indigenous language as their primary language.^{xxviii, xxix}

These gaps are reflective of specific challenges that Indigenous Youth face in agrifood systems. These include lack of access to land and water, ^{xxix, xxx, xxxi} limited participation in policy processes and governance structures, reduced access to ICTs compared to urban and/or non-Indigenous Youth, and lower rates of school completion. For example, data from 2011 show that Indigenous Youth in Guatemala were almost 12 percentage points less likely to complete primary school, and almost 13 percentage points less likely to complete secondary school. In Ecuador, Indigenous Youth are more than 16 percentage points less likely to complete secondary school. Further gaps are noticeable between young Indigenous women and men, and between young Indigenous people living in rural and urban areas (see Figure A for statistics on the Plurinational State of Bolivia). While the trend in Latin America improved significantly between 2000 and 2011, and varies across countries in the region, significant gaps – including urban/rural and gender gaps – persist with consequent impacts for Indigenous Youth on skills and labour force participation.^xxx