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The youths should be involved beyond passive consultation processes and encouraged to actively provide inputs to local and national Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) accountability mechanisms.
But the voice of the young people, who make up more than a third of the country's population, is missing in the implementation of the SDGs.
Experts made the observations at the dialogue "Accountability for SDG Implementation: Local Perspectives and Youth" organised by Citizen's Platform for SDGs Bangladesh and ActionAid Bangladesh Sunday.
"Among the 122 indicators of SDGs, eight are directly focused on youth employment, various injustice, educational rights and others. Undoubtedly, we need to pay attention to the assessment, evaluation and voice of the youth," said Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, convenor of Citizen's Platform.
ActionAid Country Director Farah Kabir said: "Though Bangladesh prepared two voluntary national reviews in 2017 and 2020 respectively to assess the implementation status of the SDGs, youth and marginalised communities were not fully involved in the process."
"So, the voluntary local reviews need to be prepared through the district, sub-district and community levels, especially involving young men and young women below the age of 35 years and who have been left behind lately due to the pandemic."