YOUTH & UNODC

Quote from Executive Direcotr, Ms. Ghada Waly, "At UNODC, we are committed to working with young people and helping them make a real difference in their communities, from preventing drug use and promting healthy behaviours, to combatting and preventing crime, corruption and terrorism."

In February 2021, UNODC launched its Strategy for 2021-2025, which underscored youth empowerment as a cross-cutting commitment of the Office. Youth empowerment means involving young people in problem-solving and uplifting their voices in decision-making processes. To meaningfully engage youth, young people need to be involved in every step of the programme cycle. Initiatives should not only be implemented “for” youth, but also “with” youth, to allow for co-creation.

In order to support this cross-cutting commitment, UNODC launched the Youth Empowerment Accelerator Framework - or the YEA! Framework. The YEA! Framework maps out UNODC's youth-focused initiatives and proposes key youth mainstreaming actions to accelerate the impact of young people across the Office. The YEA! Framework further demonstrates that UNODC is committed to working with youth to build more resilient societies and find solutions to problems related to drugs, crime, corruption and terrorism.

In November 2024, UNODC conducted a mapping exercise to better understand the scope of our youth-focused projects and programmes. In March 2025, we published the UNODC Youth Overview document providing highlights, best practices and a map of our youth-focused activities and initiatives.