Azerbaijani youth attend symposium in Georgia
Tbilisi, June 13 (AZERTAC). Azerbaijani youth delegation attended a Well-being of Young People in Eastern Europe and Caucasus (EECA) symposium here, which was organized with the support of Youth Department of the Council of Europe (CoE) and Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs of Georgia.
The participant of the event, project coordinator of “Aran” humanitarian regional development Public Union Vusal Zeynalov said that the symposium discussed the European experience on youth affairs, employment, further cooperation, positive tendencies of education, reforms carried out in these spheres, as well as progress made in the relevant fields in South Caucasus states.
With a focus on the different aspect of well-being of young people, the symposium aimed to continue strengthening the ties between stakeholders in the field of youth policy of the EECA region.
The event which has brought together nearly 100 youngsters from 35 countries of Europe and South Caucasus is important in terms of popularizing values achieved in the field of youth affairs.
The topics of the working groups covered a wide range of themes connected to well-being: healthy lifestyles, substance abuse, access to social rights, mental health, anxiety issues, self-inflicted violence, self-image, anti-discrimination and others. The panels comprised of main stakeholders focused on discussing the knowledge approach to well-being and ways of addressing this cross-cutting issue by engaging various actors within the governmental and non-governmental sectors.
Zeynalov also underlined significance of the event to strengthening cooperation among the youth in terms of integration of South Caucasus states into the European values. “We have high level relations with the Georgian people. The European attendees of the symposium also witnessed it. But, it is impossible to build such relationship with the Armenians because of Armenia`s aggressive policy against our country. We paid attitude to the relevant issue during the discussions in the working group. We informed the participants that as a result of Armenian occupation over one million Azerbaijanis have become refugees. There are a lot of youngsters who live the hard life of refugees. Unfortunately, the European structures showed double standards again, and it was suggested discussing such issues beyond the symposium”.
Zeynalov pointed out that there is a great progress in improvement of social life of the youngsters in Azerbaijan.
The organizer of the event Viktoria Karpatska highlighted that the aim of the symposium is to exchange experience on youth policy carried out in the participant countries, and create opportunity for more efficient cooperation among them.