Many projects advocate in favor of a greater and more meaningful involvement of young people in the decisions that will have a major impact on their futures: policymaking, international agreements, the governance of major public and private organizations, etc. But how to achieve this in a way that truly makes a difference?

Institutionalized youth participation

A growing number of public institutions have created youth councils and other formal channels for the participation of youths in their decision processes. Among the projects surveyed by WTFutures, Local Conferences of Youth (LCOY) in various regions officially contribute to the climate COP processes. Since 2013, the Asian Development Bank has had a permanent “Youth for Asia” program expected to contribute to its strategic plans. Most United Nations organizations have put in place mechanisms to include youths in their governance.

It is difficult to shake the impression that this participation has not made much difference in the decisions themselves. In the preparation for the 2024 Summit for the Future, a UN “Policy Brief¹” lists a long list of shortcomings: limited scope (often restricted to “issues deemed of specific relevance to young people”); lack of standing and funding; insufficient support leading to a lack of inclusivity and high turnover; the difficulty to deal with the technicality of issues and to navigate institutional complexity, etc. Surveyed by UNICEF Innocenti in 2024², the vast majority of young participants in international events estimated that their participation was “tokenistic”, more symbolic than effective, and even felt “exploited”.

“Meaningful youth engagement”

In response to these limitations, UN organizations, and particularly UNICEF, have studied the conditions for a “meaningful youth engagement”, defined as follows: 

“Meaningful youth engagement is where children and youth are involved as equal partners; where their views and circumstances are respected; where marginalized youth also get the opportunity to participate; and where youth from all backgrounds are welcome and engaged as agents of change rather than just beneficiaries.”
UNICEF Innocenti

This work has also resulted in an evolving set of principles for meaningful youth engagement, among which: safety; institutional mandate and designated seats for young participation in formal processes; diversity, inclusion, and accessibility; support in terms of funding, information, etc.; transparency and accountability; and “youths as equal partners in decision‑making”.

Formalizing the conditions for effective participation can go a long way towards enhancing the role of young people in institutional processes. However, the limitations expressed by young people are also experienced by other stakeholders trying to find their place in political processes, as well as by participants in many “participatory democracy” initiatives in various parts of the world. Improving these processes remains essential, but there should also be other forms and spaces to allow young people to drive change.

What if we were asking the wrong question?

The initiatives we just described focus on bringing young people into existing institutional frameworks. This is of course positive, but is it really the priority?

Focusing on climate, which is the topic of WTFutures, the failure to act on a sufficient scale by national and international institutions would not have been solved just by higher youth involvement. Institutions, as well as global negotiation processes, have a way of “digesting” fresh blood while remaining the same. Also, because climate change is now a daily reality in a growing number of places, adaptation has become as high a priority as mitigation. While for mitigation, local action only really makes sense if supplemented by global transformations, the local scale appears more meaningful for adaptation. The prospects for young people to take on leadership roles at this scale feels much more realistic.

We are not saying that the efforts to promote meaningful youth engagement in institutions (and corporations) should be abandoned. They are needed. But they are not the whole story nor, perhaps, the main story.

Alliances rather than mergers

In Spain, El Futuro Es Clima led a very stimulating experiment. Two separate bodies – a “Metaforum” made up of 40 randomly selected young participants, and an “Advisory Council” made up of 20 climate experts, separately rated their priorities according to three criteria: Urgency, Importance and Context (i.e., the readiness of actors to act on proposed actions). Both groups came up with a significantly divergent list of priorities. The young participants placed emphasis on communication; degrowth rather than technological fixes; and basic material necessities such as work, education, and health. Whereas the experts expressed their frustration at short-termism; their hope on younger generations; knowledge, narratives, and engagement; and some specific policies such as taxes and financial incentives.

These differences, once acknowledged, may not be a problem, but rather a way to “triangulate” action on climate change. Different groups could work on activities that reflect their respective worldviews, attachments and capacities, while having fora where they can coordinate what requires coordination, discuss where their views diverge, and learn from one another. Rather than merging everything under a big tent with planetary climate policies at the top, we could think in terms of alliances and collaborations.

“Current institutional frameworks expect youth to adapt to existing systems. This project shows the value of meeting youth where they are, through creative, artistic, and participatory means.”
Climate Futures in Brussels 2030

From discussions with several projects, we can identify a few possible directions for such collaborations:

• Co-creation: Urbanités Numériques en jeu uses game and simulation software to let young people take a leading part in urban planning projects, along with experts and technicians. By being present at the initial stages or a project, young people’s engagement becomes much more powerful. In other projects, we encounter co-education, co-research, etc.: children, teachers and professionals building knowledge and projects together, and learning different things from one another. 
• Reinvention: In Le Théâtre des Négociations, the young students simulated COP21’s negotiations, although with different roles and mechanisms. What they came up with were not better policies, but the beginnings of what could be a different way of framing such negotiations: “We realized we were arguing on the wrong matters. We were negotiating about amounts of greenhouse gases emissions instead of our vision of the world and what we want for the future. […] It is not about having a global VISION, it is about experiencing and having a global will to move forward, change, reflect upon ourselves. […] The diversity of our perceptions and our concerns prevent us from agreeing on a common vision but constitutes our common richness.”
  What can be done with such an insight? We are honestly not sure, but having seen what has become of COPs after the Paris agreements, why not give alternatives a try?
• Multilevel action: In Bagmati River Youth Project, a government-initiated program to anticipate the effects of climate change on a crucial ecosystem resulted in a massive youth capacity-building program, itself largely run by young facilitators. During this program, young participants went from defining the issues to dreaming futures, to translating these dreams into designs – and towards actually taking charge of many of the actions.
• Spaces: many projects, such as The Eco-anxiety Africa Project, point to the need for (non-commercial) spaces where young people can express themselves, share their emotions and worries, be free of adult supervision and – implicitly – interact with one another without the intermission of screens.

These are just weak signals collected from the ground. Much more work would be needed for them to begin composing a coherent framework. We hope to be able to pursue that goal in the following months.

1. United Nations (2024), “Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 3: Meaningful Youth Engagement in Policymaking and Decision-Making Processes”.

2. UNICEF Innocenti (2024), “Meaningful Youth Engagement in the Multilateral System”.