Importance of youth engagement with Parliaments: View from UN Secretary General's Youth Envoy

Ms Jayathma Wickramanayake is the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. Having represented and motivated global youth development on an international level since the age of 21, she has played a key role in transforming the youth development sector at the national level, notably through the creation of a large movement for civic and political engagement of young people named ‘Hashtag Generation’. She worked previously as Secretary to the Secretary General of the Parliament of Sri Lanka (2016-2017) and was a Senator in the Sri Lankan Youth Parliament (2013- 2015). She has also worked on the World Conference on Youth (2013-2014) and was the Sri Lankan Youth Delegate to the United Nations (2012-2013). 1

The international community’s approach to youth engagement today is paving the way for sustainable development, peace, the Agenda 2030 and for leaving no one behind. Young people, as the dominant majority population in most developing countries today, are pioneers in political action, innovation, entrepreneurship and peacebuilding. Yet, young people face a plethora of social, economic and political barriers that undermine their ability as changemakers.

To utilize young people’s change-making capacity to the fullest, their participation needs to be facilitated at all levels including in civic and political life. This is not just key to the realisation of the Agenda 2030 but also one of its core requirements. 2

Today, young people under 30 make up more than half of the global population - the largest generation of youth the world has ever known. In the Commonwealth, 60% of its 2.4 billion population are aged under 30.

However, only around 2% of elected legislators worldwide are under the age of 30 and 65% of the chambers of Parliament continue to impose a ‘waiting time’ between the age to vote and the age of eligibility to run for political office imposing age restrictions on entering democratic institutions. 3

Despite the many barriers that exclude young people from accessing and meaningfully participating in formal political spaces, young people around the world are not waiting to be heard, but insist on claiming their space, pushing for change and serving their communities. The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the exemplary resilience, courage and ingenuity that young people have demonstrated in the face of adversity and uncertainty that affect their futures more than anything.

Further, not only have they risen to the occasion to take on the ‘new normal’ post-COVID-19, but they have actively taken a leadership role in pioneering their communities out of the crisis by working at the frontlines as healthcare workers, innovating creative solutions, combating misinformation online, distributing rations, volunteering to support elders and raising awareness online, and mobilising their peers.

Young people play an indispensable role in reimagining their communities and are constantly leading action for a better and more sustainable world. And I strongly believe, that when someone is old enough to vote, they should be old enough to run for office. This is why my Office, together with partners such as the Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth & Advancement of Nigeria (YIAGA) founded the ‘Not too Young to Run’ Campaign in Nigeria to elevate the promotion of young people’s right to run for public office and address the widespread issue of age discrimination.

This is also the fourth priority area of the UN Youth Strategy, Youth2030, launched by the UN Secretary-General in 2018, focusing on young people’s human rights and their civic and political engagement through the promotion of young people’s right to participate in public affairs, including in political and civic processes, platforms and institutions at all levels, such as elections, constitutionmaking processes, political parties and Parliaments. 4

Young people’s ability to run for public office is a right, but age discrimination laws often prevent them from doing so. Removing legal barriers to running for public office is the right thing to do and gives everyone an equal chance. The active participation of young people in electoral politics is essential to thriving and representative democracies worldwide. Young people must have every right to engage fully in the democratic process, and that includes the right for young people to run for office themselves. 5

I believe that young people today have the energy, and the right to run for public office and that any efforts to prevent them from doing so serve to limit citizen participation. Research supports this by demonstrating that there is a correlation between lower eligibility ages and higher levels of youth representation, with lower legal thresholds fostering a climate in which young people are more likely to come forward and be elected to Parliament at an earlier age. 6

The ‘Not Too Young To Run’ campaign brought to global scale a movement which started in Nigeria and seeks to elevate the promotion of young people’s right to run for public office and inspire young people everywhere to actively engage in formal politics. 7

Parliamentarians should diligently call for the alignment of the voting age and the age of eligibility to run for office in any given election and advocate for youth rights to run for office, and showcase young leaders in elected positions. 8

This, in turn, will surely inspire young people to run for office themselves along with legislation moving the participation age in the favour of young people. Currently, youth compete in a very unequal state in election processes, because they don’t have public acknowledgement and the experience of a political career, or are crushed by the absence of internal democracy in parties. They lack access to financing sources and a political party structure. 9

Continued training on political skills, financing election campaigns, including young people on the board of political parties and guaranteeing a minimal space for participation of youth in electoral lists are some measures that can be taken to enhance political participation of young people. 10

Furthermore, Parliamentarians can proactively move towards legislation that promotes youth engagement such as in Peru where 10% of the municipal government must be comprised of youth representatives; in Morocco, the electoral law includes 30 seats reserved for candidates who are less than 40 years old; in Uganda, they reserve 5 seats in the Parliament to youth representatives; in the last elections in Tunisia, each electoral list had to include a young candidate who was less than 30 years old; in Kenya, they reserved 12 seats to represent special interests, youth included, people with disabilities and workers; in Rwanda, the National Council of Youth elects two members to the Chamber of Deputies; in the Philippines, there exists a stipulation to include youth in parties’ lists systems. 11

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations in 2020, we must openly recognise that the active participation of young people in electoral politics worldwide is essential to ensure thriving and representative democratic institutions. The ‘Not Too Young To Run’ campaign provides precisely such a platform for pushing needed structural change and promoting positive narratives of young people’s contributions to politics, intending to break harmful trust deficits and highlights intergenerational partnerships as the recipe for prosperous, equal and sustainable societies of the future.

The year 2020 is also the 10th Anniversary of the adoption of the IPU’s Resolution on ‘Youth participation in the democratic process’, which called on Parliaments to “align the minimum voting age with the minimum age of eligibility to run for office to ensure greater participation by youth in Parliaments.” 12

In this momentous year, I call on the international community including all Parliamentarians to incline political will and channel support, to mainstream and take specific actions to champion youth participation in the democratic process.

For more information about the initiatives of the United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth please visit www.un.org/youthenvoy.

References:

1 https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/personnel-appointments/2017-06-20/ ms-jayathma-wickramanayake-sri-lanka-envoy-youth

2 https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/2030-agenda-forsustainable-development/peace/governance/empowering-youth.html

3 https://www.ipu.org/resources/publications/infographics/2019-08/youthin-parliament-in-2018

4 Youth 2030: The UN Youth Strategy https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/ youth-un/

5 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Young People’s Political Participation Conducting a Dialogue (part 2) https://www. sida.se/contentassets/a06826186ce9459d9cd91538e0c18e6b/15043.pdf

6 Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS), 2019. Raising Their Voices: How effective are pro-youth laws and policies? https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/ifes_2019_pro-youth_report_ english.pdf

7 New Faces of Youth in Nigerian Parliament, The Convergence Magazine (Volume 2), July 2019. https://www.yiaga.org/portfolio_post/theconvergence-magazine-volume-2/

8 Editors, Jan Eichhorn and Johannes Bergh, 2020. Lowering the Voting Age to 16, Learning from Real Experiences Worldwide https://link.springer. com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-32541-1

9 Matt Henn et al. Journal of Youth Studies Volume 17, 2014 - Issue 3 Published online: 31 Jan 2014 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/ 10.108 0/13676261.2013.830704?src=recsys

10 UNDP, Enhancing Youth Political Participation throughout the Electoral Cycle, A Good Practice Guide. file:///Users/kadambarimainkar/Downloads/ ENG_UN-Youth_Guide-LR.pdf

11 Youth Participation in National Parliaments, IPU, 2018.

12 Youth Participation in the Democratic Process Resolution adopted by consensus* by the 122nd IPU Assembly, Bangkok, Thailand, 1 April 2010 - http://archive.ipu.org/conf-e/122/res-3.htm