Ghana in Search of Regional Integration Agenda 91 The Relevance of the Youth in West African Integration: A Brief Assessment The concept of the“Youth” generally refers to the time of life between childhood and maturity. It is also used to describe young people collectively. Statistically, there are no generalised definitions for the'youth'. Various organisations and countries however, have minimum and maximum age limits to identify the youth. The United Nations General Assembly for instance defines the'youth' as persons falling between the ages of 15 and 24 years. The African Youth Charter on the other hand describes the'youth' as those persons falling within the age bracket of 15 and 35 years. In Ghana, the National Youth Policy defines the'youth' as persons who fall within the age bracket of 15 and 35 years. Thus used in this chapter,“youth” refers to persons falling within the bracket of 12 to 35 years. Youth organisations thus refer to organisations or groups, whatever their nature or dealings are, made up of people within the age bracket of 12 to 35 years. As noted in the previous section, some of the challenges that have perennially acted against the achievement of the objectives of ECOWAS are attributable to elitism at the policy making level as well as the inability of the ECOWAS to galvanise all stakeholders to desire ownership of the integration process. Thus, the need to focus West African integration on the people of West Africa has been the subject of recent deliberations on how best to move regional integration forward. At a conference on regional integration in West Africa held in Addis Ababa in 2002 for instance, it was reaffirmed inter alia that; integration should aim to benefit non-state actors and average Africans across the continent and not just governments and elites. It was further reaffirmed that the process of integration must be inclusive and decision makers must involve ordinary people in the development of integration policies. 115 While the call for people-centeredness appears to be of recent origins, the essence of people centeredness to West African integration does not seem to have been lost on the framers of the ECOWAS Treaty. Recommendation A/REC.1/5/83, for instance, advocates the mobilisation of the various sections of the population in the integration process. Similarly, Article 61(1) of the 1993 Treaty affirms the undertaking of member states of the ECOWAS to cooperate with a view to mobilising, the various sections of the population and ensuring their effective integration and involvement in the social development of the region. In ensuring the above, the youth or youth organisations and their actual or potential role they play or can play in promoting and improving the process of regional 115 www.trustafrica.org/documents/report2_integration.pdf Conference was held from the 25 to 28 of November 2002