PRESS STATEMENT: INTERNATIONAL YOUTH DAY- 2023

The 12th of August is International Youth Day.

The Youth Wing of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) salutes all the young people around the
World struggling to make society more enlightened, open, inclusive, safe, productive, fair and
genuinely better for humankind. Youth struggle forward despite the terrible backlash from
imperialism and its agenda of alienation, exploitation, oppression, and it’s campaigns to divide us
along on racial, gender, ethnic, religious, age and other lines while it denies all of us community, education, healthcare, jobs, and social opportunities.

We salute the Youth for seeing through these tactics and uniting across ‘identity lines” to build the front that will defeat imperialism once and for all and build a new world.

We especially declare our solidarity with the Youth of the Sahel confronting desperate French, US,
and NATO militarism (fronted shamelessly by servile ECOWAS Heads of State) who seek to deny them
the right to reject neo-colonial legal straightjackets and develop new representative and development-oriented governance. The Youth must build on the toppling of the old order in these countries to create a governance regime that is integrated, accessible to the masses, prioritizes the collective national interest, asserts sovereignty, and builds Pan-Africanism. Similarly, we salute and express our love for the Youth of Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, Polisario, Yemen and other frontline struggles for your resistance and your perseverance. Your struggle is our struggle!

SMG Youth endorse the UN theme of this year’s celebration: “Green Skills for Youth: Towards a
Sustainable World”. There is indeed a need to build new values, attitudes, knowledge, and capacity
to support a sustainable and resource-efficient society. However, the UN formulation fails to
acknowledge that the core obstacle to sustainable development (and many other urgent societal
agendas) is the power and structural greed of global capitalism, that subordinates all social agendas
to its accumulation of profit. Any framework for “sustainability” or “greenery” that does not directly
address the need for social justice is ultimately self-defeatist and will only end up spinning more
schemes for further imperialist self-enrichment.

The Youth of the World need peace to build a safe future for our species. Ensuring this peace is the
principal function of the United Nations Organisation and that should reflect in all UN celebrations.
The chaos of the human experience in all its dimensions today is directly attributable to the
capitalist system. That is why the socialist movement believes that the single most urgent task of
our generation, our Youth, is to defeat capitalism and advance the rapid construction of socialism.

Happy International Youth Day!
Viva to Socialism!

Red Salute!

Signed.
Cde. Oboe Baiden
National Youth Leader
+233 24 965 2640

Below is the full statement