The Secretariat of the Pacific Community says countries in the region must improve their collection of youth data.
A social development advisor for youth at the SPC, Mereia Carling, says the lack of data hides the gravity of many issues facing Pacific youth.
Ms Carling says high youth unemployment rates are particularly concerning.
"What we can see is that we are vastly underestimating the situation of youth unemployment in the region. So we really need to get the data behind those kinds of things so we can start to say actually you know the situation is not what we think it is. Its a lot worse."
Mereia Carling says collecting better statistics on young people is one of the new focus areas proposed in a new framework released earlier this month.