On January 14th, the 2nd Youth Summit, initiated by Horizon Global Youth Development Program, sponsored by the School of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University, was successfully held at Optical Science and Technology Museum. This summit was organized in full partnership with Integrated Research on Disaster Risk International Programme Office (IRDR-IPO) and with strong support from UNESCO’s Representative Office in Beijing.

Prof. Shahbaz Khan, Director and UNESCO Representative to China, DPR Korea, Japan, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea, and Prof. Qunli Han delivered opening remarks. After, Prof. Changchui He, former Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Prof. Qunli Han from IRDR, Dr. Ye Li, Principal Algorithm Engineer of Microsoft STC Asia, Prof. Jingcheng Ran, Director-General, Environmental Research Academy of Guizhou Province, made keynote presentations at the keynote session.  

In their talks, Prof. Shahbaz Khan and Prof. Changchui He underscored the importance of youth engagement for global agenda toward sustainability. More opportunities must be created by youth to express their voices and ideas, and provide their contributions for cooperative projects and programs. Their messages were echoed by all speakers and they considered that this summit is such a great opportunity.

Under the title “Managing the Changing Risk Landscape: Toward an inclusive, safe, and sustainable development”, Qunli Han introduced IRDR’s efforts in enhancing the capacity building of youth to participate in global DRR cooperation. He underlined that DRR can no longer be placed at the margin but be integrated in the mainstream development agenda for sustainability. He encouraged young people’s interest in global effort for disaster risk reduction.

Four parallel sessions were conducted after the keynote session, focused respectively on Development Safety, Youth Actions and Networking, Science Technology and Ethics, and Diversity and Common Prosperity.

At the summit, IRDR-IPO and Horizon Global Youth Development Program made a joint commitment to promote young people’s participation in global governance，in particular toward the implementation of the Sendai Framework for DRR, and the Global Research Framework for Risk-informed Sustainable Development.

The summit was designed to equip young people with the multifaceted training, skills and support required to engage as active citizens in global agenda. Some 140 young people have been taking part in intensive courses since early December 2022 and worked together in groups to explore innovative and feasible solutions in responding to comprehensively changing risks in modern society.

Full text of Mr. Qunli Han's opeing remark