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.
