The Hemispheric Forum with Civil Society was held at OAS Headquarters March 10-14, 2008, during which civil society representatives debated and exchanged views on diverse areas of the inter-American agenda, and discussed the theme of the General Assembly. The civil society representatives articulated and compiled recommendations and suggestions on the theme “Youth and Democratic Values” and the Draft Declaration of Medellin.

Recommendations on the Draft Declaration were both thematic and contextual in nature, and included the following: 1) to develop policies and programs that clearly target vulnerable and disadvantaged youth, including Afro-descendents, women and indigenous peoples; 2) to employ clear mandates that can be understood and operationalized by young people and youth organizations as they seek to improve their own situations; 3) to clearly articulate the challenges faced by youth and to develop best practices and policy options for addressing them; 4) to regularly evaluate the progress of governments in fulfilling new mandates by publishing statistics on the welfare of youth; 5) to emphasize the important role that civil society organizations play in the design, implementation and evaluation of government programs, and to create new policies that support civil society organizations in their follow-up on the mandates of the General Assemblies and Summits of the Americas. Civil society organizations also provided a detailed list of the policies and programs that could be implemented by their governments to promote quality education, full employment and youth participation in policy-making.

• For further information on this meeting, please visit the Civil Society OAS web page