The Commission for Social Development has now started and the first few days have passed. There hasn't been too much exciting to report yet, except that there seems to be an increasing presence of youth. In addition to the usual suspects, the youth NGOs in New York, a US network called SustainUS has mobilized a group of young people to come attend. In addition, there has been a group of students from Norway attending as part of a trip around the world.

Still, we can't claim we have been very coordinated so far. This morning there was a meeting among NGOs where the issue of youth representation in the Commission was discussed, and there were two different youth statements being circulated. One of them dealt with the issue of representation of youth, and the fact that pretty much all of the young people here are from northern countries. The other had suggestions for how the Commission can integrate youth issues into its work by including youth as an annual sub-theme.

We quickly realized that we should combine these two statements into one, that would both make the case for including and investing in young people AND contain concrete recommendations for what should be done by the Member States.

Sometimes I wonder though if we focus too much on promoting youth participation and too little on the actual issues being discussed. During the review of the World Programme of Action for Youth in October there were a record numbers of youth delegates addressing the General Assembly, but many focused their speeches on how important it is to involve young people in decision-making. It's always important to address this, but perhaps if we focused on concrete policy recommendations that the technocrats of the UN and governments can actually use, young people could be seen on as effective contributors to the negotiations and not tokenistic excuses by governments, as is the case sometimes.

The meeting this morning also brought up another issue. It can be difficult to make substantial contributions to the negotiations during the Commission itself, given that most of the groundwork is done during the months leading up the Commission. In fact, the chair of the NGO Committee on Social Development, a group of NGOs that works on these issues all year, gave us a little "slap" and said young people haven't showed up in the committee at all and shouldn't expect to just show up now and expect to make an impact.

I really felt provoked by this statement, and was disappointed by the lack of understanding of the situation of most young people. These NGO committees around the UN are filled with older people that are in positions where they can focus all their time and energy on the issues at hand, while most young people doing this are students, interns or work in youth organizations with limited resources.

For me, these committees, although a useful avenue for participation, represent "the old and the tried", and I believe we should look for new ways to get our voices heard that enables more young people to get involved and stay updated. We should utilize communication technologies where young people are at the forefront, such as live chats and video conferences, and push the UN to enable virtual participation in these Commissions. That can also help address the lack of presence of young people from developing countries.

There are a lot of initiatives like this already in place, such as the live chats organized by TIG, GYAN and Chat the Planet on the Millennium Development Goals. We have to try to bring this into the UN and other institutions when important decisions are being made, enabling young people all around the world to participate and contribute, and not being hindered by funding and visa problems.

Until then, we'll have to make the best out of the next week.