The core principle for meaningful and
effective youth political participation is “nothing
about us without us.”
Any strategies to enhance meaningful
and effective youth political participation should be grounded in a
rights-based approach and avoid tokenistic activities.
Exemplary engagement with youth to
foster meaningful and effective youth participation is:
Genuine: Ensure that you are engaging with
young people for the right reasons and that you are approached as partners
focusing on an adherence to the values and contributions of young people. This
requires recognizing young peoples’ right to participate and valuing the
contributions of young people.
Respectful and rights-based: Applying a rights–based approach, which recognizes young people as
agents of change and strengthens avenues for youth participation in governance
processes. Youth should be approached as active agents who have the right to
participate and be heard. Engagement should enable young people’s ownership and
leadership in governance processes
Transparent: This means being clear about the
purpose of youth engagement, whether youth-led or when organizations collaborate
with youth on processes.
Accountable: In order for participation not to be
a one-off event, mechanisms need to be in place to ensure follow-up,
implementation of youth decisions, and accountability to youth constituencies.
This requires the development of standards of practice and accountability for
youth engagement/development work, including responsibility for reporting back
to youth and a framework for monitoring and evaluation as appropriate. It also
requires that young people take an active role in monitoring and accountability
by establishing channels whereby youth participation can have a visible impact
on outcomes.
Youth friendly, relevant and purposeful: Activities to enhance youth political participation should be as
youth-driven as possible. Young people themselves can decide on their
priorities, methods, and tactics. The environment and working methods can be
adapted to youth capacities and needs – meeting youth where they’re at.
Depending on the target age group and context, activities might focus on, among
other options: informal, results-oriented projects; low access barriers; easy
language; being issue-driven; being competitive with a game element; or
technology if educated youth are targeted. It means young people take on valued
roles, addressing issues that are relevant to them, and influencing real
outcomes. To be relevant, they can link to specific concerns of youth such as
unemployment, the environment or HIV and AIDS.
Inclusive: Ensuring all young people are able to
participate, regardless of age, background, religion, gender, race/ethnicity,
sexual orientation, ability, geography, and mental health. This requires an
acceptance and embracing of diversity, and efforts to build upon young people’s
diversity and experiences. Appropriate methods can be applied to give
marginalized groups of youth equal chances to participate. This also requires
being sensitive to gender dynamics and power relationships. Being inclusive
requires the removal of barriers, including economic barriers, to enable youth
engagement.
Flexible and open to innovation: Commitment of youth and adults working with youth to be open to new ideas
and have a willingness to take risks and challenge existing established
processes and structures.
Capacity-developing: Strengthen youth agency by supporting capacity development for young
people, youth organizations, networks, and movements, to enhance mutual
responsiveness, trust, and collaboration.
Sustainable: Sustainability of financial
resources for best-practice youth engagement initiatives can help to ensure
these are not limited or one-off events or processes. Apart from financial
sustainability, youth engagement should be supported by older adults who are
the decision-makers and who value and prioritize youth. Intergenerational
collaboration reduces the risk of increasing youth voice without establishing a
receptive environment. Youth may need to be continually recruited for
engagement processes, since they out-grow their membership of the “youth”
category quickly. Successful youth engagement leads to decision makers seeking
youth involvement and leadership in addressing challenges and designing
solutions.
Voluntary and safe: The safety of all
persons in any process, program or organization is paramount. Further, if
engaging with young people under the age of majority (i.e. 18 years old), then the
engagement would need to comply with legislation specific to working with children.
This might involve an organization working with minors to have codes of ethics
and standards of practice for working with children, and/or complying with
‘Working With Children’ legislation, if it exists, and putting other measures
in place to ensure it is a child-safe environment. Above all, the principles of
“In the Best Interest of the Child” and “Do No Harm” should govern engagement
by adults with minors.
(The above is adapted from United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), Enhancing Youth
Political Participation through the Electoral Cycle (2013), and from
Restless Development and PLAN International UK, “Principles Guiding for
Decision Makers” (2018), http://restlessdevelopment.org/file/guiding-principles-pdf.)
These guiding principles are not
exhaustive; they are a starting point, and can be strengthened, expanded and
applied to your own experiences of engaging with youth.
See Annex: Guiding Principles for
Supporting Young People as Critical Agents of Change in the 2030 Agenda (https://www.youth4peace.info/GuidingPrinciples/Youth2030)
See Annex: Guiding Principles on
Young People’s Participation in Peacebuilding (developed by the UN
Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development’s (IANYD) Subgroup on Youth Participation
in Peacebuilding, co-chaired by the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office
(PBSO) and Search for Common Ground)
https://www.sfcg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/SFCG-Guiding-Principles-Inforgraphic.pdf
