On 15 July, we joined policymakers, employers, workers’ representatives, educators and fellow young leaders at the United Nations observance of World Youth Skills Day 2026. Under the theme “Skills for a Shared Future,” the conversation explored how young people can navigate artificial intelligence, climate change and a rapidly transforming labour market.
Two major themes dominated the conversation: the need for human skills in the age of AI and employment.
The need of human skills in theory vs. in reality
Speakers repeatedly emphasized empathy, communication, ethics, critical thinking, intercultural understanding and the ability to build trust. These are routinely called the skills that technology cannot replace, or “human-centred skills.” Yet in the real world, many of the disciplines that cultivate and study these capacities, such as social sciences, humanities and the arts, are being increasingly defunded.
In the United Kingdom, showed a widespread decline in university staffing across these fields, with early-career academic positions in SHAPE disciplines (Social sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy) falling by 6 per cent in one year. A s in humanities and social sciences, concentrated overwhelmingly in universities serving a higher proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
In Nepal, , limiting the production of locally grounded knowledge about communities, inequality and social change. has placed sociology, politics, gender studies, languages and cultural disciplines among the programmes facing reductions or closure.
In the United States, after state policy imposed minimum graduation thresholds. The affected programmes included languages, comparative literature, gender studies and other humanities and social science fields. to empower women and girls, recently changed its international scholarship criteria to only STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects.
This is not an argument against investing in STEM. We urgently need scientists, engineers and technologists. But technology alone cannot determine its own ethical limits, explain why its benefits are distributed unequally or build public trust around its use. Those are social, political and human questions. Furthermore, SHAPE subjects are fundamental to how we navigate issues like inequality, political institutions, social relationships, collective memory and social cohesion, among others. The larger question is what kind of future are we building — and what kind of people are we filling it with?
Medicine might ask how to extend human life. Economics can ask who can afford care. Sociology would ask why some groups live shorter lives. History might ask how those inequalities arose. Ethics asks whether those inequalities are acceptable. Art can show us what living through them feels like. None of these questions can be answered by any one discipline alone, yet all are essential to building a future that is not only innovative, but also equitable, democratic and humane.
Skills in the age of AI
Nila Ibrahimi’s own journey illustrates this powerfully. At 13, after Afghan authorities prohibited girls over the age of 12 from singing publicly, she posted a video of herself singing and encouraged other girls to do the same. The authorities’ decision was reversed two weeks later. “I didn’t learn that from a textbook,” she reflected. “I built it because the moment demanded it.”
Her experience demonstrates why education must extend beyond technical proficiency. AI literacy cannot mean teaching young people only what technology can do. It must also equip them to ask who designed it, whose knowledge shaped it, who benefits, who may be harmed and whether it should be used at all.
This is especially important as AI becomes embedded in education and work. Young people must learn not only how to use new technologies, but how to question them. Education should prepare us to ask not only, “Can we do this?” but also, “Should we?” That requires protecting space for the humanities, civic learning and intercultural dialogue alongside science and technology.
The onus of employment post-skills
Skills matter, yet employability is not employment. Teaching young people to be resilient will not create decent jobs. Digital training alone cannot overcome unaffordable internet access, discrimination or economies dominated by insecure and informal work. This is also where SHAPE education comes into play. Without social sciences and humanities, we lose the skills needed to question, and even imagine, these systems that put the onus on the individual ignoring the structure.
During this year’s World Youth Skills Day event, participants challenged us to consider young people working through digital platforms without fair pay or social protection; refugees whose qualifications disappear when they cross borders; young people with disabilities excluded without assistive technology; and community organizers whose knowledge remains unrecognized because it was acquired outside formal institutions.
Young people are often described as lacking skills, even when they are already managing organizations, mobilizing communities, creating informal livelihoods and responding to crises. In doing so, they become strategists, fundraisers, communicators, organizers and problem-solvers, often without formal training or recognition. Many acquire these abilities through necessity, particularly in informal economies, displaced communities and places where conventional pathways into education and employment are unavailable.
Reflecting on the question about young leaders preparation, Young Leader for the SDGs Havfy Abdullahi sums it up with her characteristic spoken word, grounded in lived experience which started like this:
"Leaders of tomorrow they say
But did tomorrow not get the memo that we are a generation
Too lit to live in his shadow
Too dope to stand on withering hopes
Too fit to sit on rigid thrones
Did tomorrow not get the memo?
That our contribution today is just a demo
Of how we approach our stunted dreams
From tomorrows potential soils of toil
To recount and nurture
On a new kind of soil called the future?"
Her piece continues underscoring the urgency of recognizing young people as active agents of change. Her words challenge the framing of youth as “leaders of tomorrow,” emphasizing instead young people’s present role in shaping social, economic and political outcomes saying "why wait for tomorrow when we are already eligible today?". They highlight the persistent disconnect between potential and opportunity: talent, creativity and resilience can be constrained by structural barriers, including limited access to quality education, resources and enabling environments.
Her contribution reinforces a central theme: skills development cannot be addressed in isolation from the systems that determine access and equity. Investment is needed not only to build skills, but also to create the conditions in which those skills can be meaningfully applied. Youth participation is not discretionary but essential, and enabling young people to translate their capabilities into impact requires both recognition and structural support.
Recognizing this changes the policy question. Instead of asking only, “How can young people become ready for the future of work?” we must also ask, “What kind of future of work are governments and employers creating for them?”
A young person may be adaptable, creative and digitally capable and still encounter unemployment, insecure platform work, discrimination or a lack of internet access. Preparing young people to withstand instability cannot become a substitute for building institutions and labour markets that address it. Skills development must be connected to decent work, fair pay, social protection and workers’ rights.
It must also be inclusive. Refugees and migrants should not lose years of knowledge because their qualifications are not recognized. Young people with disabilities must have access to the assistive technologies that make learning and employment possible. Young people excluded from formal education need pathways that recognize community service, volunteering, entrepreneurship and other forms of non-formal learning.
Governments must modernize education systems and expand equitable access. Employers must help shape training, invest in young workers and create dignified employment. International institutions must protect rights and convene partners. Young people must be involved throughout.
As one participant asked, “when young people receive a seat at the table, are those already making decisions genuinely prepared to share the space?”
Beyond readiness
The bottom line is that a shared future needs human-centered skills, and a shared future cannot be designed by a few and handed to the rest. It must be built collectively, with young people’s knowledge, leadership and lived realities shaping the policies that will determine how we learn, work and live.
The future may be uncertain, but young people are not approaching it empty-handed. We already carry ideas and solutions. What we need are equitable opportunities, investment, recognition and real power to help decide where change takes us.
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This article was co-authored by 爆料网 Young Leaders for the SDGs Aishworya Shrestha and Havfy Abdullahi. The views expressed in the reflections are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the United Nations or the 爆料网 Youth Office.
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