The world is witnessing a ‘wave of emancipation by young people’

Young people, it seems, are increasingly getting off the couch and try to be heard or do something. ‘I think we are now seeing a wave of emancipation by young people,’ says Marc Dullaert, former National Children's Ombudsman of the Netherlands and founder of KidsRights. Dullaert does not think of a youth movement, but about 1919. ‘A hundred years ago you had the women's voting right movement. Now they are young people.’

New digital platform for young people

At the UN Youth Climate Summit in New York, KidsRights launched a digital “State of Youth”, together with Facebook and the participation of Erasmus School of Economics, a permanent digital platform for young activists. The project was also presented at a conference of Nobel Prize winners in Mexico, on Friday.

The platform was founded by Dullaert, but a youth council decides what the State of Youth will do. The debate runs via Facebook and Instagram – in first instance Facebook wants to reach between 60 and 100 million young people.

Young people between 13 and 24 can contact State of Youth for advice, training and funding, via KidsRights, if they want to take action themselves. In addition, every three months a “Preferendum” is held, a referendum in which one can indicate its preferences. This weekend, a vote on climate was started. From a list of sixteen climate measures, young people will jointly identify the three most promising ones. The results must then find its way to world leaders.

‘Young people are being hear more and more often,’ says Dulleart. ‘In the Netherlands, for example, there will be a youth parliament, as was announced in the Speech of the Throne. Ireland will use the Preferendum results for a debate between young people and the parliament. And in Denmark, the government has a youth advisory council on climate.’