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YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES
Youth -- What are we?
by Premesh Chandran, Malaysia
There has always been something special about young people. We seem to feel more when we are young and slowly change into "products" of society as we grow older. Yet, while being special, young people are a changing generation. Today, sports and games are being replaced by drugs, gangsterism and fascism; working at home for the family is being replaced with child labour or youth labour, slaving away at a factory or selling their young bodies; and the alertness of a young mind is being replaced by the numbness of malnutrition and starvation.
Where culture, community and family used to form the basis of an upbringing, today materialism and poverty dominate. Both cause a perversion of traditional culture, beliefs and values leading to a de-sensitized generation which creates its own signboards when and where necessary. In a world which is changing overnight, perhaps this is the only means of survival.
Within this spectrum, having been extracted from their traditional culture and adopting another (internalizing an artificial culture and philosophy), some seek to imitate the icons of society. Others find it impossible to reconcile what they find as alien and absurd to the "reality" of life preached by the elders. They choose to rebel against the present or create a new future. Imitate, create, rebel and survive - the Youth of today.
Hence the essence of youth today is diversity. Unlike women, indigenous peoples, workers, peasants, gay and lesbians and other oppressed "sectors" of society, youth do not have a single dominator and cannot be placed in a single political framework against such a repressor.
Within their diversity, youth identify with or against different aspects of society, including those aspects which oppress other sectors. It becomes a political choice to identify with or against these oppressive forces, and it is here that the commonality bridges the diversity, hence forming a youth movement towards change.
Young people are also well positioned to push for change. Most are significantly less dependent on the economic system, which allows them room to protest. Their protests are more readily accepted as sincere and unselfishly motivated as compared to those coming from other sectors of society. As products of education and social engineering and as the inheritors of the planet, they have a right to be heard. Being linked together by educational institutions, ideas easily flourish and take root. Yet as the youth identity is transient in nature, ideologies within the youth movement tend to be dynamic rather than dogmatic.
With their energy, enthusiasm, open minds and strong wills, young people have been at the heart of many social movements in the past and present. In Asia, from the fight for independence against colonial rulers, to current democratic struggles in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Nepal, Burma, East Timor and China, students and youth have fought alongside workers and peasants in the continuos struggle for justice. As in Asia, all over the world, young people are forging links with other oppressed sectors to challenge an unjust world order.