A TECHNICAL PAPER ON YOUTH PERSPECTIVES ON RISKS TO THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND WITHIN THE UN80 REFORM INITIATIVE

1.0 Background

The United Nations’ engagement with young people spans six decades. As defined by the UN, youth refers to ages 15 to 24, the definition this paper applies. UNFPA has been the UN’s lead youth-focused entity since 1969, with its mandate reshaped by the 1994 ICPD Programme of Action toward a rights-based approach. Today it operates in 152 countries and has, since 2013, remained the core UN agency supporting Africa and South Asia in harnessing their demographic dividends. In March 2025, the Secretary-General launched the UN80 Reform Initiative to mark the UN’s 80th anniversary and transform how the System operates. This is a genuinely pivotal opportunity, though as this paper shows, it is one unfolding largely without the young people it will most directly affect.

2.0 Rationale and Evidence Base

This paper draws on a desk review of UN80 documentation and public statements, and a stakeholder survey of young people conducted by youth-led organizations in Africa, which supplies its central rationale. Roughly half of respondents had zero prior exposure to UN80, and of those aware, most understood it only vaguely, with fewer than 1 in 10 showing genuine understanding. Awareness of the workstreams and proposed actions such as the UNFPA-UN Women merger is lower still, at just 30%. This is not merely a perception gap but a participation gap: only 19% feel youth consultation on UN80 has been meaningful, while 53% call it “somewhat, but not enough.” The findings, therefore, reflect a mix of informed positions, emerging awareness, and limited knowledge, a mixture that is itself this paper’s core finding.

3.0 Demographics at a Glance: Youth Population Across Continents and Countries of Interest

Today, 1.3 billion people aged 15 to 24, the largest youth generation ever, make up the world’s population, with over half (roughly 760 million) in low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs) such as India and Nigeria. Between 2025 and 2050, LLMIC youth populations are projected to grow 16%, reaching nearly 880 million, concentrated mostly in sub-Saharan Africa; and by 2050, close to 69% of the world’s youth will live in LLMICs, up from 59% today. Nearly 60% of global youth are concentrated in ten countries, five of them LLMICs: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. This paper anchors its country-level picture in Nigeria where its youth account for 70% under the National Youth Policy’s under-30 measure (NPC, 2025), central to projections that Africa will host nearly half the world’s youth by 2030.

3.1 Africa’s Demographic Dividend Agenda: What Is at Stake

Africa’s commitment to harnessing its demographic dividend is neither new nor incidental. At the African Union Summit in January 2017, the continent adopted a landmark initiative to harness the Demographic Dividend through investment in youth and advancing Agenda 2063; a continental roadmap followed on 30th January 2017, which Nigeria replicated domestically on 6 July 2017. Uganda, Zambia, and Mozambique were among the earliest countries to commission national demographic dividend studies, and Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania have since developed their own national roadmaps.  In Nigeria, there is a gap between the country’s demographic potential and the current realities (Bill & Melinda Gates Institute, 2020). Across the four pillars of demographic dividends, Nigeria still has a long way to go in terms of improving indicators that can accelerate growth and harness the dividends of its population. Total fertility rate is at 4.8 births per woman (NDHS 2024) and  maternal mortality ratio remains one of the highest in the world  at 1,047 per 100,000 live births (WHO 2023). Only about 63% of primary-school-age children regularly attend school with an estimated 18.3 million children out of school altogether (UNICEF 2023). 79.5% of Nigeria’s working-age population is in the labour force, yet 93% of employment is informal, and a combined 13% of the labour force faces unemployment or time-related underemployment (NBS 2024). Despite all of this, the population continues to grow at an estimated rate of 2.1% annually.

Country efforts to harness demographic dividends have been greatly enhanced by UN support, including support for data generation for planning and for programs. Yet UN80’s architecture offers little clarity on how, or whether, the UN intends to sustain this support going forward, an uncertainty which is anchored directly in the proposals  within the planned reform agenda.

4.0 The UN80 Reform Agenda, Its Work Streams, and Related Matters

Per the Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative Action Plan (November 2025) and Progress Report (May 2026), UN80 rests on three work streams: 

1. Optimising structural efficiencies 
2. Reviewing mandate implementation to eliminate redundancies

III. Pursuing structural realignment, including possible mergers such as UNFPA with UN-Women, and UNDP with UNOPS. 

The third work stream carries the greatest weight here: the proposed UNFPA/UN-Women merger touches directly on UNFPA’s role in youth affairs and demographic-dividend programming, and has provoked intense debate spanning financial concerns, mandate-dilution fears, and claims of benefit.

4.1 The Merger of UNFPA and UN-Women: Positions and Debates

Member state hesitance has been sharpest among states most exposed to disruption, including African states. Rwanda argued “coherence is not uniformity” and that reform should pursue complementarity “rather than consolidation for its own sake,” guided by evidence, consultation and accountability. Mozambique pressed that boards must exercise genuine governance, not merely receive information, warning the mandate/delivery distinction can easily blur in practice. South Africa posited that the merger is only useful if mandates are not compromised, country delivery continues with limited disruption and financing is fiscally responsible.

The UK’s FCDO have also warned the merger risks diluting SRHR and gender-equality programming and exposing both mandates to political pressure. A coalition including Canada, Belgium, Brazil and Sweden has pressed similar caution.

Civil society and human rights organisations centre their objections on mandate dilution, argued most fully in Getting UN80 Right: Protecting Mandates While Improving Coordination (Fòs Feminista, 2026). It notes the merger contradicts a 2023 independent review that recommended strengthening, not consolidating, both agencies; that genuine mandate overlap is only 20 to 30%; and that roughly 287,000 women die annually from preventable maternal complications, half in humanitarian settings where UNFPA is often the sole responder.

Set against this institutional debate, young people’s own position in the reform process remains unheard. The status of youth engagement in the UN80 reform process is  one of marginalization. What engagement exists is largely high-level and advisory rather than structural. Civil society has called for formal, institutionalised youth platforms within UN80 rather than treating youth input as optional. Official reports and stakeholder analyses converge on the same gap: formal mechanisms for youth participation in UN80’s technical work streams remain limited, a gap young people feel directly, reflected in the finding that only 19% of surveyed opinions consider current consultation genuinely meaningful.

5.0 Risks Analysis of the Merger with Youth Perspectives

Four main risks emerged from the youth perspectives gathered on the proposed merger: the risk to genuine intergenerational representation, to hard-won SRHR and gender equity mandates, cost-cutting hollows out the field infrastructure and local engagement young people are asking the UN to strengthen, and the risk to direct service delivery on the ground.

First, at the center of the current conversation around the UNFPA-UN Women merger is a deeper question: what kind of United Nations does this generation want to leave for the ones that come after it? An efficiency-driven reform, if left to run its own course, risks compromising inter-generational equity and genuine representation, treating young people as symbolic add-ons rather than co-shapers of decisions that will define their future. What youth are asking for is not just a seat at the table, but real feedback on how their input actually shapes outcomes, a shift from token consultation toward co-creating decisions. This ensures that when such pivotal changes and decisions are being made, youth issues do not end up on the chopping block.

Second, while reform of the UN system is important and overdue, young people are weighing that need against the risk of losing hard-won gains built up over decades, specifically, the entry points for SRHR and gender equity that keep girls in school and manage fertility through rights-based means. The case for reform is not without merit: proponents point to less duplication, a single stronger voice on gender at country level, and administrative savings that could, in principle, be redirected into programming. But youth are not convinced these gains are guaranteed, or that they outweigh the risk to UNFPA and UN Women’s distinct, hard-won specialized mandates. There is also a sharp concern with timing as a merged entity risks subordinating SRHR into a broader gender-equality frame precisely when the political climate is most hostile to explicit SRHR language, meaning the mandate most likely to be diluted is the one most in need of protection right now.

Third, cost-saving measures must not compromise future generations through lost visibility or weaker local engagement. Young people understand the demographic dividend chiefly through education, health, skills and employment, and worry that cuts could hollow out the field infrastructure connecting them. No analysis has been done on what a merger actually means at country level: where both agencies have offices, is there real duplication or simply a need for better coordination, and where only one agency is present, does the merged entity inherit that gap rather than close it. On the ground, this could look like a program on Ending Female Genital Mutilation currently funded and staffed under UNFPA quietly folded into a broader mandate with no dedicated budget line or focal point. 

Fourth, the merger carries direct service-delivery risk that goes beyond mandates and representation. UNFPA’s host country agreements and its pharmaceutical and contraceptive supply chains span roughly 90 countries; a merger could require renegotiating these agreements from scratch. Africa is especially exposed here, since the continent relies heavily on UNFPA specifically for contraceptive supply and maternal health commodity delivery, disruption at this level would be felt immediately, not after a multi-year transition.

6.0 UN80 Reform Pillars and Africa’s Demographic Dividend Programming

Africa adopted its Demographic Dividend initiative at the AU Summit in January 2017, advancing Agenda 2063’s “Africa We Want.” Africa hosts the world’s largest youth population, a key UN interest, yet UN80’s architecture does not clearly define UN continuity in supporting demographic-dividend efforts in youth-majority regions, an uncertainty anchored directly in the proposed merger.

Arguments for extreme caution include: a high probability of disruption to UNFPA’s core mandates, should the merger proceed, risking reversal of hard-won demographic-dividend gains across Africa; and that the UN80 Country Team 2.0 model would fundamentally alter how development, health and education programmes are funded and executed continent-wide.

6.1 Risks and Challenges to Africa’s Demographic Dividend Programming

Three risks stand out for Africa specifically. 

First, dilution of UNFPA’s specialised SRHR mandate, including family planning and contraceptive autonomy, a prerequisite for catalysing demographic transition. 

Second, a “cost-cutting” agenda could undermine human capital investment precisely when Africa’s demographic window is most time-sensitive.

Thirdly, UN80’s own preliminary merger assessment (Work Package 4, 30 March 2026) estimates recurring annual savings of USD 32 to 38 million against one-time transition costs of USD 56 to 110 million, meaning roughly one to three years of savings would be needed simply to offset transition costs. 

The assessment notes these savings are not the primary rationale and would need reinvestment into delivery capacity generally, not necessarily African field programmes. It also names funding volatility as one of its own principal risks, warning that both entities already operate amid high earmarking and donor concentration, and restructuring could unsettle financing partners while arrangements remain unclear. For Africa, promised efficiency gains are neither quick nor guaranteed to reach the field, and transition itself risks the donor uncertainty the UN’s own assessment warns against.

7.0 Strategic Recommendations for  Meaningful Youth Engagement within the Reform Process

Taken all together, this paper points to five priorities:

• Establishing a mechanism for meaningful youth engagement throughout the UN80 reform process and particularly for the workstream that impacts youth programmes at country level. Such a mechanism must provide opportunity for real decision-making influence, and a mechanism for tracking how youth input shaped outcomes.
• Ensuring the UN80 reform process retains UNFPA’s ICPD-enshrined mandate and strategic plan distinctly, maintain or scale up support for Africa’s demographic dividend, and develop a transition plan to prevent disruption to youth-focused programmes.
• Centering youth and women in the  development priorities, particularly SRHR, girls’ education, and youth employment, protecting the four enabling factors respondents identified: education, health, skills, and employment.
• Increasing engagement of youth at country level, especially in Africa where the demographic dividend agenda risks , through youth-friendly communication with youth participation built into the full policy cycle at local, national, regional, and global levels, and representation of diverse, marginalized young people rather than a small representative group.

8.0 Conclusion 

The UN was created to serve all people, present and future. Yet across eight decades of reform, none has generated the attention and criticism UN80 has. UN80 reads as an inward-facing exercise focused on systemic transformation rather than the lived experience of those it serves, particularly the 1.3 billion young people who make up a substantial share of the world’s population. The evidence gathered in this paper converges on one message: “Nothing about young people without meaningful young people’s participation.” Young people broadly support reforms that make the UN more effective and responsive; what they will not accept is efficiency purchased at the cost of accountability and the protection of mandates that keep girls in school, save mothers’ lives, and open real economic opportunity. If UN80 is to be fit for purpose, youth aspirations must actively drive its implementation. The proposed UNFPA/UN-Women merger should be approached with extreme caution: its direction carries consequences that matter deeply for the youth of the world and Africa’s development trajectory.

References

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