Effective and meaningful youth
political participation has one of three attributes.[i] First, it can be consultative, where young people’s voices are heard in
an adult-assigned consultation process, where they have capacities, a mandate
and information to fully perform their roles, or through a youth-led advocacy
initiative. Second, it can entail youth-led participation, where young people
have a direct impact on decision-making within their own youth communities,
such as through youth-led NGOs, student councils, and youth parliaments with
competencies and budgets. Third, it can involve youth collaborative
participation, where young people effectively take part in regular political
decision-making processes, including as voters, or as members of parliament,
political parties, or advocacy groups.
Strategies to enhance meaningful and effective youth political
participation can:
1.
Be grounded in a rights-based
approach to youth political participation and avoid tokenistic and pseudo-participatory
activities.
2.
Include direct components of
consultative, youth-led, and/or collaborative participation, and emphasize
learning-by doing and practice-what-you-preach approaches.
3.
Meet minimum standards for youth
political participation by being transparent, respectful, accountable,
youth-friendly, and relevant, inclusive, voluntary, and safe.
4.
Include capacity development on
the individual and the organizational level, and foster enabling environments,
preferably in a reciprocal fashion (such as by developing skills for a reformed
structural setting).
5.
Be grounded in an accurate
understanding of the current state of youth in a given context.
Following a rights-based approach entails considering youth as potential
agents of change – as part of the solution, not a problem to be resolved by
others. Further, young people are not a homogenous block and other social
aspects (such as gender, rural/urban dwelling, ethnicity, language, among
others) need to be taken into consideration when designing interventions. An
emerging challenge for EMBs and other electoral stakeholders is to find a way
to facilitate youth engagement through formal institutionalized processes and
simultaneously integrate less traditional forms of political engagement.
[i] Based
on: Hart, “Children’s Participation;” Gerison
Landsdown, “The Realization of Children’s Participation Rights: Critical
Reflections,” in A Handbook of Children
and Young People’s Participation: Perspectives from Theory and Practice,
eds Barry Percy-Smith and Nigel Thomas (London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis
Group, 2010), 11–24, http://nmd.bg/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Routledge-. A_Handbook_for_Children_and_Young_Peoples_Participation.pdf;
Ravi Karkara, “Essential Reader on Strengthening
Meaningful and Ethical Participation of Children and Youth: Social Coherence
and Human Rights,” draft for UNICEF and Youth Habitat, Turkey, 2011.
