BANGKOK: Asia-Pacific governments may face waves of youth unrest, crime and vandalism if they fail to reduce the number of unemployed youngsters, which has reached “unprecedented” heights, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned on Wednesday.

What the region needs are innovative education programmes that train youth with the skills demanded by the labour market, ILO officials added during the opening of a three-day meeting here on “Youth Employment in Asia and the Pacific”.

“Governments have to ensure that once the youth come out of the education system, they are employable,” said Ian Chambers, director of the ILO’s East Asia division.

“We have noted there is a clear mismatch between what the education system produces and what the labour market demands.”

He also urged policymakers to take a hard look at some of the established youth training programmes that look good on paper but are wanting in many respects.

These include programmes set up in cities like Bangkok that cater to youth of the middle and upper classes, “who are not totally dependent on it for employment, since they have other options”.

“But the ones (youth) who need training programmes most are the youth who have no access to such initiatives, like those living in Isaan (north-east Thailand),” Chambers added during a press conference.

Furthermore, governments should not perceive youth “as a problem” but as “partners of development,” Saifuddin Abdullah, a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel for the Youth Employment Network, said during a panel discussion. “Youth participation has to be institutionalised in the government consultation programme seeking answers to unemployment.”

Jobless youth in Asia and the Pacific make up over 50 per cent, or some 33 million young people, of the global figure of the 66 million young men and women who are unemployed, states a conference document.

Of that number, some countries in the region — both developing and developed - have been flagged by the UN labour agency as having “high and rising” unemployed youth.

They include Sri Lanka, with 29 per cent unemployment among its youth, the Philippines, with 25 per cent, South Korea, with 15 per cent, and recession-plagued Japan, with almost 10 per cent.

Youth are more adversely affected by unemployment than adults, explains San Yuenwah, social affairs officer at the social development section of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). “Youth unemployment tends to be three to four times higher than non-youth unemployment,” San said.

“In fact, unemployment rates are generally higher for the more educated than those who are less educated, (and) in most developing countries of the region, unemployment is mainly an urban phenomenon,” San added.

Experts also touched on the equally disturbing underemployment indicators in the region. According to Chambers, underemployment is widespread among youth in the agricultural sectors in Southeast Asia. “Despite their potential, they only work during the planting and harvesting season.”

Along with the worrisome unemployment picture for young people, the ILO also pointed to the predicted increase in the region’s population, which will compound the “ballooning unemployment” problem and is threatening to undermine development in the continent. —Dawn/InterPress Service.