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Home >> Evaluation/Research >> Youth in Bangladesh
 Youth in Bangladesh: A Thematic Review

Executive Summary

Adolescents and youths (10-24 years) form the biggest segment of the population of Bangladesh. Approximately 23 percent of total population falls in the age bracket of 10-19, classified as adolescents, a distinct segment of young people. Among them, girls constitute a different subgroup in terms of magnitude of the problems they encounter including lack of knowledge on RH, early childbearing, low access to antenatal care, low usage of contraceptives, age specific fertility rate as high as 144 per 1000 live birth. The situation is even worse for unmarried girls as the existing health facilities do not cater to their needs. Findings suggest that the reproductive health knowledge among young people is very poor. Consequently, they engaged in risky behavior making them very vulnerable to a host of problems like STIs, HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy. Unfortunately, schools do not provide any reproductive health (RH) information to them. Research showed that schools are the best avenue for reaching a large volume of adolescents and youths in an effective way, in terms of cost, creating enabling environment and disseminating quality information. Another research revealed that RH education along with livelihood initiative averts early marriage in the community.

Gender gap is wide across all sectors. In education sector, despite increased enrollment in schools in both urban and rural areas in recent years, the proportion of adolescents dropping out from school continues to be high. Between the ages of 6-15 years the proportion of boys and girls attending school are indistinguishable, but by age 16-20, boys are more likely than girls to stay in school (40 vs. 27 percent).

Inconsistencies in relation to defining the age bracket of youth exist in the country. The youth defined by Department of Youth Development was 15 - 35 years. However, the new National Youth Policy defines youth as persons in the age group of 18 - 35 years. This definition leaves out almost entirely the very important segment of adolescents (10 - 19 years), which has been classified as a separate segment of young people. Ironically, the National Children Policy 1994 defines children as boys and girls less than 14 years of age. In this free for all situations, where do young people between 14 and 18 years go? A case of nearly 15 million 'missing' adolescents!


Objectives

The purpose of the thematic review is to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategies, and approaches and programmes on youth issues that are being addressed through different interventions in the country, including the UNFPA CP, and to identify gaps that need to be addressed through future Programme in Bangladesh, in general, and in the 7th CP.

Methodologies

The group followed the standard methodology of collating and reviewing all the policies, programs and researches related to youth activities, interviews with program managers, and discussions with relevant stakeholders to get their views regarding youth issues. In addition, field visits and observations were also made to get insight of the ground realities. There are some limitations. The mission altogether was for a month only. At the same time, this important review, actually needs more attention and more time. Since several work days were lost due to unforeseen hartal besides national holidays and weekend, the work actually completed in less than one month.

Main Findings

After a detailed review of the programmes based on field visits, discussions with the stakeholders and study of the relevant documents, the review team has the following observations:

General Observations

  • In terms of funding priority, it is observed that only 0.30 percent of the total budget was directly allocated to Department of Youth Development though the youth constitute nearly 42 percent of the total population.
  • Although an extremely large base of educational system exists where an overwhelming majority of young people is available and accessible, it has not been used effectively for reaching them with RH information.
  • Despite a unanimous view that it is necessary and beneficial if youth are provided with a platform to organize themselves, a very negligible base has been created (in nearly 68,000 villages, only 5,000 youth clubs exist).
Achievements

  • The biggest achievement of the government, as also of UNFPA, is to put youth and gender issues in the national consciousness where most people are now aware of the special concerns of these segments, even though the scale of programs is still very low. The foundation is well laid; a befitting superstructure is now required to come up much faster.
  • FP which is predominantly a youth issue, has been a great success due to right national priority for mass mobilization, including the religious leaders and several NGOs
  • The UNFPA supported programs like ARH and RHIYA are conceptually well designed. The ARH project is increasingly becoming popular and is ready for scaling up, after, of course, some fine-tuning based on the evaluations. As the RHIYA project is still in the development stage, an economic evaluation component can be introduced to measure the cost-effectiveness of the program.
Areas requiring improvement

  • The coverage of youth is quite low in spite of their huge population.
  • Despite the small scale, the programmes are not being effectively monitored.
  • Poor coordination and linkages among program managers as well as the policy makers are major stumbling blocks.
  • Quality of training leaves much to be desired.
  • Teachers are shying away from the issues like HIV/AIDS, despite its inclusion in the curriculum, which may be due to poor capacity building or lack of enabling environment.
  • Lack of documentation of program experiences leaves the program planners and managers ill-equipped to bring about the necessary improvement, and share the experience with others engaged in programs on similar issues.
Constraints and opportunities

Constraints
  • Low political/ national priority to youth programs
  • Poor allocation of funds Opportunities
  • Some of the relevant policies are under reexamination/reformulation, which gives a great opportunity for inclusion of youth issues and concerns in most of these policies
  • Adoption of ICPD and MDG goals by the government offers a good base for providing priority to youth issues.
  • Interest of a large number of national and international organizations in youth related issues should be harnessed. Recommendations

    Overall recommendations
    • The linkages between various ministries/departments should be institutionalized for convergence, coordination and economy as well as for avoiding overlap, inconsistencies and contradictions.
    • To provide common ownership to all the Ministries/Departments as well as the national and international agencies, a 'National Partnership for Youth' should be established.
    • Since several policies are addressing different issues of youth, the policies are needed to be harmonized for convergence and synergy.
    • Gender sensitization across all programmes should be ensured since the problems of boys and girls are often very different and require different approaches and weightage.
    • Youth programmes should be viewed from a rights perspective rather than be condescending or patronizing. It should be remembered that youth have important inalienable rights to information/knowledge, education, RH choices, recreation, employment, etc.
    • Since employment is the basic youth concern, vocational training and opportunities for micro-credit should be extensively provided as a part of as many programmes as possible.
    • To provide a support structure to youth movement, Youth Clubs should be set up in the entire country - one in every village including urban slums. These clubs should be encouraged to get registered, and provided with guidelines on how to organize their activities effectively.
    • The huge educational infrastructure (both GoB and private) should be extensively mobilized and RH issues should be incorporated in secondary and higher secondary school curriculum and teachers should be trained on RH issues
    • Movements like Scouts and Girl Guides should be expanded.
    • The already existing scheme of National Awards and honors should be expanded to encourage more participation. Awards could be instituted for Best Youth Clubs, Best NGOs working with Youth, Best Teachers, Schools, Colleges, Medical Colleges, Private Practitioners etc.
    • Partnership with media (print, electronic and folk media) should be established and sensitization workshops should be organized for them. Prizes for best programmes should also be instituted.
    • Operations research should be conducted alongside with all pilot projects so that projects experiences are well documented as well as capacity of the implementers are built.
    Recommendations for UNFPA 7CP

    • UNFPA should play the nodal role to bring together all stakeholders on one platform. They should provide assistance for organizational secretariat support for 'National Partnership for Youth'.
    • 'Youth Leadership Training' and 'Youth Counseling Training' should be developed for youth club office bearers.
    • Every pilot project must have inbuilt components of operations research and economic evaluation, so that project experiences can be documented and cost effectiveness of the project can be measured. This is extremely important for replication and scaling up.
    • Technical support should be provided for developing quality-monitoring mechanisms and skills.
    • An inventory of IEC/BCC materials should be prepared through a professional organization. All materials should be evaluated for effectiveness and standardization and only the tested materials should be disseminated. This will also save money on duplication of materials, which can be profitably used for dissemination.
    • UNFPA may facilitate workshops where teachers, educational administrators and NCTB should come together to review the curriculum at various levels. Periodic review will be helpful.
    • Youth/adolescent friendly services should be provided to young people in their school premises by establishing 'Health clinic' (a room can be used for health clinic in the school).
    • A system of Concurrent Evaluation of programs should be developed by involving universities, medical colleges and other suitable organizations in the field, including NGOs and professional research bodies.
    • GIS database should be developed for better understanding of youth targeting activities for identification of vulnerable/uncovered areas and avoiding duplication and overlap.

    In short, the new initiatives of UNFPA in the 7th CP should be three-fold:

    (a) To help consolidate the gains of the plethora of programmes already under way by providing technical support for achieving better synergy, coordination and linkages.
    (b) To provide support for capacity building to all the implementing agencies to perform better - not just in programme implementation, but monitoring and evaluation as well.
    (c) To provide incentives to different players for good performance in terms of innovativeness, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, etc.

    All these can most appropriately be done under the banner of the proposed 'National Partnership for Young People'.

    Conclusions

    Today's young people are the parents and leaders of tomorrow. Investing in their well being must be one of the best and most important actions that can be taken today, especially action to make sure that they are equipped with the knowledge and information about reproductive health so that they can take care of themselves and become knowledgeable and responsible parents in future. The importance of 'Youth' issues is now well established and recognized at the policy level. Several organizations are working for it. What is now needed is to make it a national movement and provide a national umbrella.

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