Friday, 15th October 2010

Why having a National Youth Council is a good idea?

A youth council or similar structure is a form of representation of young people through which youth express their voice and engage in community decision-making. Given that a precondition of a healthy democracy is the active participation of citizens, especially young people, and a vibrant civil society sector, including youth organisations, having youth structures representing and empowering young people to have a say and be heard is crucial.

Since working together in order to address the needs and defend the rights of young people in a given society and at a given level it makes sense that different youth activists, youth organisations and interest groups create an umbrella structure, such as a local, regional, national youth council.

A national youth council (NYC) should be led by young people and for young people and usually fulfils two main tasks: on the one hand it empowers young people to get involved in the things that are important to them and have a say in decisions that affect them; this is usually done by providing capacity building for individuals and member organisations via training workshops and volunteering opportunities. On the other hand a NYC is an important stakeholder in the structured dialogue with institutions and decision-makers; in practice this means doing advocacy and lobby work towards decision-makers to enable the youth voice to be heard but also serves as a consultation body for institutions regarding youth issues. There are other reasons why having a NYC in place is a good idea but the above-mentioned are key in my opinion.

Now that we established why having such structures makes sense let us have a look on what the situation is in Europe at the moment. From the 48 member states of the Council of Europe (if we include the suspended Belarus) we have national youth councils or similar structures in (in some cases such as Belgium and Spain due to their specificity even more than one) the vast majority of countries. Over thirty of them are also members of the European Youth Forum. But several countries, such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia and Turkey do not have an NYC yet in place or if they do they are not YFJ members.

YFJ has decided to put part of its youth work development focus on assisting the creation of new NYCs. However, it has become apparent that assisting in the setting up of new NYCs in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe is not an easy task. Unless a sufficient number of national branches of INGYOs that understand and promote the added value of having a structure such as a NYC in place is engaged in the process. 

Following the previous commitments made by MOs in past work plans and the agreed need for continued support to the development of new NYCs we should learn from experience of the past and try to make necessary improvements for the future. At the same time we should explore the possibilities of how we could help INGYOs strengthen their national branches wherever possible and applicable. Only by working together can we achieve the desired goals!