What is meaningful youth engagement?

As we notice a general tendency to over-request youth participation without adequate benefits, the question ‘what is meaningful youth engagement?’ has taken on a new colour. It is becoming the norm to call for youth to participate, but the process for engaging them has lost some of its meaning along the way.

What have UNOY peacebuilders valued in representational opportunities that they have engaged in? Drawing from our members’ experiences, it is clear that inclusivity, preparation, protection, and follow-up are crucial ingredients for meaningful youth participation, and that this requires appropriate time and resources that should not be borne by the youth themselves.

Youth feel that their participation is valued when they are, according to one of our members,

given the floor and the voice to speak

and included as equal partners in the decision-making processes that directly affect them and their youth counterparts. Meaningful youth participation includes youth visibility beyond tokenistic inclusion. It strives to remove the barriers that stand in the way of youth accessing opportunities to share their knowledge and experience, and influence positive change in the same way that they are creating it.

Young peacebuilders and human rights defenders within these fields additionally run the risk of their safety and protection being compromised. As shared with us by one of our members,

The lesson learnt (frankly speaking) is that, as usual, we, as youth and human rights defenders, will remain in danger and threatened, and we have to rely on ourselves to create a better reality.

What we can take away from this is the urgent necessity to shift the responsibility for protection to programme organisers and institutional actors, rather than remaining with the young peacebuilders themselves.

Meaningful youth engagement ultimately leads to sustainable and impactful change that has stemmed from the experiences, recommendations, and equal partnership of youth. As UNOY is dedicated to improving meaningful youth engagement, on this International Day of Peace we would like to share our newly developed practical checklist, which provides questions to keep in mind when engaging with youth. It is by no means exhaustive, but a great starting point to improving partnerships with young people and the quality of contributions, while reflecting on existing power dynamics.

We are eager to support our non-youth partners and YPS allies in fostering meaningful engagement with young people in speaking engagements, decision-making, and overall programming. The underlying objective? For young people to be treated as equal partners by their non-youth counterparts in the peacebuilding and human rights fields, through active and meaningful inclusion throughout the entire duration of an engagement.

Take action & download the checklist here: www.unoy.org/downloads/mye-checklist/