YOUTH DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT ANNOUNCED AT PALACE OF NATIONS

The Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Youth Constituency, the first global youth constituency in the humanitarian sector, and the only youth sub-group to democratically influence high-level humanitarian programs and policy through the United Nations system, is calling on humanitarian funds, development partnerships, and United Nations agencies to include youth-led NGOs in decision-making structures across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus.

From Mogadishu in the East to Accra in the West, and from Khartoum in the North to Cape Town in the South, more than 100 youth-led NGOs from across the African continent are part of the ECW Youth Constituency, and they are mobilising in support of a more democratic sector.

(Picture: First meeting of the League of Nations in Geneva, 1920. Published on Twitter by UN Geneva)

In January 1920, the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, was established at the Paris Peace Conference. Six days later, the first Assembly of the League took place in Geneva, Switzerland, crowding the city to capacity. Of the more than one hundred delegates in attendance, none fell within the designation of youth, despite the fact that young people would inherit the future the delegates had assembled to build.

In the years that followed, humanitarian actors upheld the established tradition, convening without considering the voices or engagement of young people. In October of 1945, when more than fifty-one countries created the United Nations, little in terms of intergenerationality had shifted in the halls of international humanitarianism. Another generation of young people stood to inherit the consequences of wars they did not wage, unable to co-create a future of peace.

“For nearly a decade, I have been part of the response to the insurgency of Boko Haram in Northeastern Nigeria. I have seen how resources are allocated, and I know where they should go. But if voices like mine are not included—the most affected—humanitarian funds will miss out. Simply, nothing about us, without us.” - Ibrahim Ishaku Balami, Executive Director of Nigeria’s Future Resilience and Development Foundation, member of the ECW Youth Constituency

In 2020, Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies, created a youth constituency to influence high-level humanitarian policy, disrupting a century of convention. Youth-led NGOs from around the world applied to join, and after only a few weeks, they were represented in the fund’s governing structure. For the first time, young people sat alongside Presidents and Prime Ministers. Most profoundly, they co-created policy not as individuals, but as a democratic collective.

"Our democracy ensures that youth representation is not tokenistic, but representative of the views of young people everywhere.” - Samuel Sasu Adoteng of Ghana, a representative of the All-Africa Students Union a member of the ECW Youth Constituency

Over the next two years, the youth constituency provided input on emergency programs across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Afghanistan following US President Biden's withdrawal of U.S. troops and in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, in addition to multi-year programs in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Burundi, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Congo, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Niger, and Mali. The constituency created a democratic space within the fund's decision-making structure and across the humanitarian sector, building working relationships with the elected representatives from the Civil Society Constituency, Education for all-Somalia, and the elected representative from the Teachers' Constituency, Education International.

On International Youth Day 2022, the Education Cannot Wait Youth Constituency called on humanitarian funds to include youth-led NGOs in dialogue and decision-making structures, from the local to the global level, in a segment for The United Nations Office at Geneva produced by UN Web TV. The elected youth representative, Henry Davidkhanian Wright spoke to the camera from the Palace of Nations, in the same halls where diplomats from around the world convened for the assemblies of the League a century before. The youth representative elucidated the call in an op-ed for Inter Press Service, co-written with the Director of Education Cannot Wait. Members of the ECW Youth Constituency from Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana and Kenya raised their voices in a blog post published by the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies.

(Video: Youth Representative H.D. Wright releases the call to action from the Palais des Nations, Geneva, 2022)

If you are interested in finding out more about the Youth- and Student-led Subgroup or applying to join you can do so here.