 Thursday
at the Prepcom
Listen to us, don't just hear us, insist youth
New York, June 14 - It's not difficult to listen to children.
You just have to stop talking.
That was the advice of a participant at an Action Aid session
entitled How to Make Young People's Voices Heard. Ironically, it
is the one thing that some adult participants failed to do as the
two-hour workshop was marred by almost constant interruption from
private conversations and people walking in and out.
The workshop was one of the many held during the week-long third
Preparatory Committee (Prepcom) meeting of the UN General Assembly's
Special Session on Children.
The moderating skills of the under-18s co-chairing the session
were tested as they worked to keep the discussions on track. Despite
the challenges, children and adults got the opportunity to talk
about what they were doing or wished to see done to get young people's
voices heard.
"We need the opportunity for more young people to address
high visibility, formal meetings just like the late South African
AIDS activist Nkosi Johnson did at the conference on HIV/AIDS [in
Durban last year]," suggested a major in the Ugandan army.
A youth representative from Russia agreed, saying that it was
the personal testimonies of eight child victims from Chernobyl that
helped galvanize world action after the nuclear disaster.
Participants discussed the empowering effect of creating spaces
for children to express themselves and to network with each other
and the importance of creating a society in which children could
easily talk to their parents, teachers and government officials.
"We, for example, have set up a training programme for our
police and local government officials on how to talk to and interact
with children," said a youth representative from Bangladesh.
Getting young people directly involved in leadership was another
way. PLAN International Finland described how their organization
had established parallel Boards of Trustees - one comprised of adults
and another of children. Participants cited the example of Youth
Parliaments such as those in Togo and Mexico, and had a frank discussion
about the difficulties of ensuring that these types of initiatives
make meaningful contributions to the official bodies and processes
of government.
"It is important to be heard but we must also make sure that
what we say doesn't just go out the other ear!" noted the co-chair
from Bhutan.
Most of the young people underscored the distinction between having
their voices heard and being involved in taking decisions.
"Like now we are not allowed to have input into the negotiation
going on around the outcome document," said one youth. "Children
shouldn't have to try harder than adults to be heard," agreed
another.
The session also raised the question: "What are you 'elite
children' who are here in New York going to do when you get back
home to help those children who are disenfranchised?"
This provoked a heated discussion on how experiences, information
and tactics learned during this Prepcom would be fed back to children
living in extreme poverty and in hard-to-reach areas around the
world. Among the suggestions discussed were the role of "change
makers" or youths who would travel around their regions to
champion the cause of children, the establishment of national feedback
networks, skills workshops and communication through short stories,
theatre sketches, poems and essays.
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