Brunei Youth Council To Attend Regional Meet
By Malai Hassan Othman

Bandar Seri Begawan - The Brunei Youth Council will send its representatives to Kuala Lumpur to attend an upcoming annual regional meeting of the Committee on ASEAN Youth Cooperation (CAYC), which will be held in KL from January 7 till l0.

Representing Brunei are Pengiran Haji Suhaimi, the Permanent Chairman cum Vice President of the Brunei Youth Council (BYC) and the Deputy President of BYC, Awang Haji Harun bin Mokti.

Pg Hj Suhaimi said the meeting would discuss the appointment of new executive committee members for the year 2004 to 2005 and other development programmes that need to be implemented for the benefit of youths in the region.

Malaysia is currently the chair of the CAYC, which is an NGO body that functions as an observer with speaking rights in the Asean's Senior Official Meetings on Youth. It is one of the various committees set up to look into all aspects of development in Asean.

As part of its efforts to promote social cooperation, a forum for Youth Development Affairs was established in the Asean structural framework.

The Asean Youth Forum was later restructured to become the Asean Sub-Committee on Youth (ASY), which was later elevated to the Senior Officials Meeting on Youth (SOMY) in 2002. The SOMY meets annually to coordinate and implement youth development programmes for Asean member countries.

The SOMY comprises senior officials on youth affairs from Asean member countries with the committee for Asean Youth Co-operation (CAYC) as an observer. CAYC's status was later upgraded to Observer with Speaking Rights.

The First Asean Ministerial Meeting on Youths (AMMY I) was structured to act as the higher-level body to resolve the common social problems among the youths of Asean member countries. The inaugural AMMY was held in Jakarta in August 1992.

In conjunction with AMMY I, August 8 was designated as Asean Youth Day (AYD). Since then, AYD has been held in each of the member countries every year by rotation.

To give further publicity to Asean cooperation on youth matters, it was agreed, at the 15th ASY Meeting that the CAYC could participate in ASY projects and that project coordinators would invite the media to raise the awareness of the public of project activities implemented by the ASY.

On the whole, Asean youth cooperation has made important progress in addressing issues of central concern to youth development, such as unemployment among out-of-school youths - a subject that will increase in importance with the anticipated deepening of the social impact of the financial crisis.

The ASY has made important strides to ensure that its activities in the future will be guided by work programmes and hence will have greater and more sustainable impact. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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