Youth have strongest voice yet in United Nations agreement

The application of a new influencing framework for including youth in international decision-making forums has resulted in unprecedented youth representation on a United Nations agreement.

“The Geneva Declaration for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) contains the strongest support for the role of youth in international decision-making in any United Nations (UN) agreement outside of UN (agreements) that were specifically directed towards youth and children,” says Donna Huffam, media and communications officer for the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD).

The IISD successfully experimented with a different approach for securing influence and impact so that international decision-making forums, particularly those on communications technology, would involve youth more.

By demonstrating the value of youth input to key decision-makers through preparatory conferences, the decision was made to include youth in the WSIS and ultimately the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the purpose of which is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out a mandate for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on key elements of Internet governance.

The IISD influencing framework emphasizes relationships and interaction with the gathering and publication of knowledge and information taking a secondary role.

At the heart of the IISD strategy is the management of opportunities, “both taking advantage of key windows to move our work into the hands of others, and creating opportunity directly.”

With regards to youth involvement, the institute was able to use the knowledge of the youth from the WSIS conference in order to prepare a position statement for a G8 meeting on the digital divide, says Huffam.

IISD then contracted with a leading youth organization called Taking IT Global to set up ongoing dialogues and gather opinions and insights from youth around the world on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) issues.

Later six researchers were hired to investigate in their own countries the connections between national ICT strategies and sustainable development.

“Then these young people became experts in their areas as well,” says Huffam. “And they were able to get into and engage their national delegations on Internet governance.”

IISD supported the youth in communicating the knowledge they were gathering through a variety of means including holding workshops at the WSIS and organizing panel sessions at the IGF.

Besides the strong youth representation on the Geneva Declaration for the WSIS, other changes that have come about through IISD’s influencing framework are the inclusion of youth representatives on the national delegations for ICT strategies in Kenya and South Africa.

As well, the Youth ICT Entrepeneurship Award was established by the Global Knowledge Partnership, funded in part by the Swiss government.

The executive secretariat for the IGF established a youth panel for its first forum in Athens, 2006, and has continued to support youth on its advisory committee for subsequent forums.

“Those are some of the changes we have seen and we feel that can be directly related to the work on youth that was done in preparation for the WSIS,” says Huffam.

The IISD continues to test and refine its influencing model with other partners, one of which is the Lake Balaton Development Coordination Agency. ISSD and the agency are developing a strategy to influence stakeholders to improve the management of Lake Balaton in Hungary.

For more information, visit www.iisd.org.

— Part two of a two-part series

Part One:
New influencing framework impacts youth involvement in international decision-making