UNESCO Pakistan Strengthens Its Commitment to Youth: Inside the Latest Orientation Session and a Growing Partnership Agenda

To translate this strategic vision into sustainable progress, UNESCO's work across its four core sectors blends grassroots youth-led action with essential systems strengthening, policy governance, and capacity building. Instead of viewing young people in isolation, UNESCO focuses on building the institutional structures that will support them in becoming the strong leaders of tomorrow.

In Education, the starting point is sobering: more than 25 million children remain out of school in Pakistan. UNESCO's response includes the Radio Education Project, which uses radio programming and youth talk shows to extend learning and life-skills content into underserved areas; the Out-of-School Children (OOSC) initiative, which combines community mobilization, GIS data mapping, and non-formal education to drive enrolment and retention; and the Climate-Smart Education Support Initiative (CSESI), which builds disaster risk reduction and climate awareness directly into school systems. The "No Child Left Behind" campaign, run through community surveys and GIS-mapped non-formal learning centers in Islamabad, has already enrolled thousands of previously out-of-school children, a concrete proof point for the model.

In Culture, UNESCO's priorities center on protecting World Heritage sites, safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, and growing creative industries in a digital context. For young people specifically, the message is that cultural participation is not a nostalgia exercise but a pathway to entrepreneurship and innovation. The World Heritage Young Professionals Forum 2026, running in Korea from 13-21 July under the theme "World Heritage, Communities & Education," and the annual World Heritage Volunteers campaign are both live opportunities for youth to plug into this work directly.

In the Natural and Social Sciences, UNESCO Pakistan is backing youth-led solutions on water security, plastic waste, and biodiversity, including support for youth-run Science Clubs and INSPIRE Pakistan, a youth network applying science and engineering to climate change and disaster risk reduction. A recent success story: UNESCO engaged five Islamabad universities to research and develop homegrown solutions for reusing plastic waste, with students driving the technical work themselves. On the awards side, options range from the MAB Young Scientist Awards (up to USD 5,000, under 35) to the UNESCO-Al Fozan STEM Prize, worth USD 50,000 across five global laureates.

In Communication and Information, the data presented at the session makes the urgency clear. UNESCO's 2024 global research found that 80% of young people use AI tools multiple times a day for education. A local survey of over 1,000 students across ten Pakistani universities, conducted with Freedom Network in 2024, found that 63% of respondents observe some form of online disinformation daily, and that 81% see social media as the platform most prone to spreading it. UNESCO Pakistan's response includes the Digital Citizens for Peace programme, which trains young content creators and student journalists to counter hate speech and disinformation, alongside technical contributions to Pakistan's 2025 National AI Policy review and a Digital Gender Inclusion Strategy developed for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.