By Carl Greaux
Many of the concerns facing the youths of St. Kitts-Nevis at this point of the Federation’s development reflect the social problems and issues confronting our society. The youths of St. Kitts-Nevis, after all, represent a social group within our societal structure and as such are impacted on by those issues which confront the Federation as a whole. Nonetheless, I will briefly present a synoptic examination of the concerns of our youths. While acknowledging the societal nature of most of the issues raise in this article, I will attempt an assessment of these concerns with respect to our youths.
The concerns of our youths, which will be identified in this article, are not necessarily reflective of a representation among young people in statistical terms, but rather in terms of the seriousness of their implications for the under-realization of the potential of the youths involved. While some of our youths involved in gangs, crime and drugs or infected with AIDS remain a minority, it is indeed of grave concern.
Base on a recent survey, it was revealed that many of our youths feel powerless in a society dominated by adults in which they are not listened to and over which they have no control. They feel alienated from the normative patterns which are supposed to guide their behaviour and on the basis of which they are judged. The youths call for a greater say in the decision-making process, especially as it relates to issues impacting directly on them, and this is echoed not just in St. Kitts-Nevis but globally. It is perhaps time that we go a step beyond platitudinous statements to the effect that our youths represent the future of St. Kitts-Nevis and let them do so.
We know it is a fact that no human or civil rights exist without concomitant responsibilities is as true of our youths as of any other social group in our country. The youths of St. Kitts-Nevis in this technological age must know that they have inherited a legacy, hewn out of our social history through generations of struggle, sacrifice and commitment. It is still within living experience of our people that life expectancy stood below 60 years at birth, that wage levels were generally below subsistence, that secondary, much less tertiary, education was accessible only to a narrow elite, that our trade union, political parties and other social institutions concerned with the preservation and improvement of the quality of life for our people were non-existent, that right to self-determination did not even exist as an ideal, much less fundamental assertion of our people. But we can say thank God for papa Bradshaw.
Thus, one of the foremost responsibilities of our youths is to defend this legacy which they have inherited and, perhaps as importantly, to help to restructure the underlying social, economic and political institutions to respond to needs of the people of St. Kitts-Nevis in this 21st century. And in doing so, I recommend that parents should accept and discharged their basic responsibilities in the upbringing of children and in the inculcation of values and standards; that public figures in our country should see themselves as role models, avoiding double standards in personal and public behaviour; that our National Youth Council stop being political and operate as an independent and autonomous institution so that their deliberations and views be given serious consideration by Government in the formulation of policy affecting our youths’ general concerns; that Government should continue to promote the development of sports and recreation for our youths; and that immediate attention be given to statutory reform, especially with respect to domestic violence, including incest and sexual abuse of children, as well as to the incidence of rape in all forms.
Should these recommendations be implemented, surely it will be a step in the right direction in addressing some of the concerns of the Federation’s youths.
