From Users to Co-Architects: Advancing ICPD Commitments for and with Youth in a Digital Age (CPD59 Side Event).

 

 This side event of the  fifty-ninth session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD59) seeks to sustain the momentum of the Cotonou Youth Action Agenda and the 2024 ICPD30 Global Dialogue on Technology, emphasizing that a digital future must be equitable and co-engineered with the people who navigate it daily.

The implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action is now inextricably linked to the rapid evolution of technology, research, and development (R&D). As digital platforms increasingly mediate how young people access information, health services, and civic participation, these spaces have become the infrastructure of rights realization. Consequently, exclusion from the design and deployment of these systems is an exclusion from rights. While approximately 79 per cent of people aged 15 to 24 globally use the Internet, they frequently encounter censorship of health information, algorithmic suppression of gender equality content, and technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Without effective regulatory spaces and systems of accountability that enforce privacy by design and equitable access, digital environments risk reinforcing existing discrimination rather than dismantling it.

This session seeks to sustain the momentum of the Cotonou Youth Action Agenda and the 2024 ICPD30 Global Dialogue on Technology, emphasizing that a digital future must be equitable and co-engineered with the people who navigate it daily. Anchored in the Global Digital Compact (GDC), the session calls for a "responsible, accountable, and human-centric approach" that moves beyond consultative roles. By aligning with the UNFPA Strategic Plan 2026-2029, the goal is to institutionalize a model where young researchers and tech-innovators co-engineer AI-driven health systems and data tools, ensuring that rights are upheld from the pre-design stage through to deployment. Digital inequality remains shaped by disparities in connectivity, infrastructure, and financial flows, particularly affecting young persons with disabilities, Indigenous communities, and those in low-resource settings. While youth-led innovation often remains underfunded and centralized within state or corporate actors, this session applies a "Leave No One Behind" (LNOB) lens to advocate for a human rights-based approach to digital research and governance. By recognizing young people not simply as users but as co-architects of these systems, the session provides a roadmap for Member States to prioritize inclusive technology as a prerequisite for fulfilling the ICPD promise of bodily autonomy.

Watch from Users to Co-Architects: Advancing ICPD Commitments for and with Youth in a Digital Age (CPD59 Side Event)!

Side Events