In 2012, youthpolicy.org sought to provoke action, dialogue and honest reflection to promote a new approach to international decision making. Through /participation, the conversation must now move on, and in the coming weeks we will launch a new global conversation asking the question, ‘What structures really change the world?’ We’ll hear from several experts in the youth participation, campaigning and the UN.
Throughout last year, this website critiqued youth and civil society events and global governance structures from Rio+20, Y21, CIVICUS World Assembly, the Global Youth Forum, Y20, and other UN youth participation initiatives. Read our key comments here.
In critiquing and assessing the impact of events and processes, youthpolicy.org has sought to provoke action, dialogue and honest reflection to ensure the inertia of global governance ends and a new approach to international decision making reflects the modern world and not the post-World War II world in which many institutions were founded.
At youthpolicy.org/participation, we must move this conversation forward.
In the coming weeks we will launch a new global conversation.
What structures really change the world?
Featuring:
“The great movements of the last centuries, from abolition, to women’s suffrage, to civil rights and LGBT rights, have been about telling a story of shared humanity.”
“Electoral politics is slow and hard and often boring, but Europe’s young people simply can’t reverse the coordinated austerity which is costing them their futures without it.”
“The top-down approach, depending on the generosity of the rulers, even when they are elected, has not in many cases succeeded in providing better lives for most citizens.”
“In 10 years together we’ve helped a series of campaigns go from margins to mainstream and make change happen. Credit for these achievements doesn’t lie with celebrity rockstars, though they’ve certainly helped.”
This broad, all-encompassing conversation, will be the first in a series of articles to spark discussion and debate to move beyond the rhetoric of international youth participation and shift the rules of engagement for global activism and change.
Our next conversation will focus specifically on youth and how young people, in a modern, connected and networked world, can be most effective in achieving the global change they desire.
Where are the opportunities for intervention? Who can initiate and sustain change? How could this be achieved? What would it mean for the way campaigns and movements organise themselves?
Let’s begin the new conversation.