Youth
Young people are at the forefront of change worldwide. From climate justice to digital inclusion, young people are organizing, innovating and leading real solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges.
This International Youth Day, 12 August 2025, the theme is Local Youth Action for the SDGs. This is a call to action for governments, institutions and businesses to recognize and support young people’s leadership – not just in principle, but in practice.
One powerful example is the Global Shapers Community, a network of 10,000 young people, aged under 30, organized across 500 cities in 150 countries and territories, supported by the World Economic Forum and its diverse partners.
This year, over 2 million Afghans — including half a million children — have returned from Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia; photo: UN News Center / IOM.
Four years after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghan women and girls face sweeping restrictions that have stripped them of basic rights and opportunities, deepening poverty and worsening a humanitarian crisis, UN Women and UNICEF warned in a joint statement, according to UN News Center.
According to the Afghanistan Gender Equality Index, the rollback of women’s rights is accelerating the country’s social and economic decline, widening inequality in healthcare, education, employment, security, and governance.
Severe restrictions, severe consequences
Girls are banned from attending school beyond the age of 13, while women are barred from most professions and from political participation. In some areas, women cannot leave home without a male escort, and in many families they are denied the right to make independent decisions.
UN Women estimates that the ban on secondary education for girls costs the country 2.5% of its GDP each year. Restrictions on training female doctors — coupled with limits on women receiving care from male physicians and a decline in foreign aid — have sharply reduced access to healthcare. This has contributed to rising maternal mortality, an increase in child marriages, and more cases of violence against women.
Youth aged 15–35 make up 33 per cent of Myanmar’s population of 60 million, with a national median age of 27. Despite their demographic significance, youth under 35 won only 8 per cent of seats in the 2020 elections. This underrepresentation contrasts sharply with the central role they play in Myanmar’s political and civic life.
From 2010 to 2020, Myanmar youth saw a glimpse of freedom and opportunity. However, the 2021 coup prompted a new wave of youth-led resistance and civic engagement. For many young people, the 2021 coup was not just a political event; it resonated in a deeply personal way, erasing the glimpse of democracy they had experienced and snatching away their hopes for more opportunities and freedom.
Youth were among the first to revolt against the 2021 coup leaders, calling for the restoration of democracy. They flooded the streets in peaceful protests, expressing their resistance through marches, music, performance art, and digital campaigns. Their peaceful efforts were met with a brutal crackdown by the military junta.
On 12 August, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) celebrated International Youth Day by organizing a webinar for members of parliament and international partners that would highlight new tools and initiatives aimed at empowering young parliamentarians. The focus was on enhancing gender equality through efforts that promoted youth empowerment in politics. The event emphasized peer learning, international cooperation and practical tools that helped young leaders become more effective and influential in their political roles and in promoting gender equality.
The Women and Youth Democratic Engagement (WYDE) initiative, funded by the European Union, is a global effort to strengthen youth participation in democratic life. Launched in 2024, WYDE | Women Leadership brings together organizations like the IPU, UN Women, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) to advance women’s political participation and decision-making through social norms change, networking and global advocacy.
Women and youth in democracy: WYDE – the EU’s flagship initiative
The WYDE initiative is a 63 million euro effort implemented by over 20 partners, including the IPU. It is one of the EU’s Youth Action Plan flagship programmes, strengthening the role of young people as active and informed participants in democratic life. The Youth Democracy Cohort (YDC), with over 550 members, advocates for democratic reforms and offers seed grants to its members. The European Partnership for Democracy leads the Global Youth Participation Index, providing a comprehensive overview of youth political participation in over 140 countries.
Through training, dialogue platforms and support for youth-led organizations, WYDE enhances young people’s leadership capacities and promotes their representation in governance. The Democracy Schools organized by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) and the Accountability Hubs are key training and mentoring programmes for young leaders.
WYDE also works to identify and remove systemic barriers that hinder youth participation, such as discrimination, lack of access to political networks and limited civic education. Notable efforts include the cost of politics studies and micro-grants awarded by the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA).
MANCHESTER, England (CN) — A growing body of research shows young men in the U.K. are moving toward conservative and anti-establishment politics, while young women are becoming more liberal and radical in their views.
Researchers say the gender gap among Generation Z is wider than in any previous generation, and risks reshaping British politics as the voting age is set to be lowered to 16.
The trend is part of a wider international shift: A generation once expected to be broadly progressive is splitting along gender lines — socially, politically and culturally.
Global gender tensions
A 30-country study by Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found that Gen Z men and women are more divided on gender roles and feminism than any generation before them.
The study, which covered Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australasia, found that 53% of Gen Z women identified as feminists, compared to just 32% of Gen Z men — with the 21-point gender gap the largest among any age group surveyed.
Young men were more likely to say efforts to promote equality had gone too far, with some saying men are now being discriminated against. At the same time, both genders were more likely than older cohorts to feel there is rising tension between men and women in their country.
In most wealthy nations, women have steadily closed the gap with men in education, income, and professional achievement. Today, they earn the majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctorates. More than half of all STEM degrees now go to women, and their presence in the tech industry has grown—from 31 percent in 2019 to 35 percent in 2023. In major metropolitan areas like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., women under 30 now match or outearn their male peers.
Given these gains, one might expect that as men and women converge in education and income, their cultural values and outlook on the world would also grow more aligned. Yet the opposite seems to be happening.
Nowhere is this divergence more striking than in politics. Since 2014, young women in the U.S. have grown increasingly left-leaning, while the political orientation of young men has remained relatively stable. By 2021, 44 percent of young women identified as liberal, compared with just 25 percent of young men—the largest gender gap in political affiliation recorded in 24 years of polling.
Why would men and women grow more politically divided even as they become more economically and educationally alike? The answer lies in persistent psychological and behavioral sex differences that continue to shape how each group sees the world.
The global proportion of MPs aged under 30 has edged up to 2.6 per cent, according to the latest IPU report on Youth Participation in National Parliaments. This represents an increase of 0.4 percentage points compared with two years ago. However, with 50 per cent of the world’s population under 30, the report highlights a sizeable deficit in the political representation of young people worldwide.
Just over ten years ago, the IPU’s Member Parliaments adopted the 2010 resolution on youth participation in the democratic process. The resolution led to the creation of the Forum of Young Parliamentarians, the premier global body for the world’s youngest MPs. It also led the IPU to collect data and information on youth participation in parliaments. This latest report is the fourth in the series and is based on data from 2020.
Click here to access the report.
Summary of facts and figures on the participation of young people in politics based on 2020 figures.
Click here to access the infographic.
This Discussion Paper puts together relevant data on the inclusion of young people and women in European Parliament elections.
It is focused on two pitfalls of EU electoral democracy: voter absenteeism on the part of young people, and the under-representation of women in the European Parliament. Data have been combined from the European Election Studies (EES), the European Parliament, the Gender Statistics Database of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), face-to-face and telephone interviews, and semi-structured questionnaires. Additionally, policy papers and other relevant texts (authored by organizations dedicated to young people, women and think tanks, as well as Europarties and groups in the European Parliament) have been considered. The scope of the paper is European, although data at a national level from France, Poland and Spain (a founding EU country, an Eastern European country and a Southern European country) are introduced in different sections to shed light on national differences. With the purpose of enriching and making EU electoral democracy stronger, the author presents, as food for thought, some evidence on key elements to foster participation in European Parliament elections, as well as to reach a more balanced composition of the European Parliament in terms of age and gender.
Click here to see the academic article.
The Second Annual Summer School for Young Leaders from African Political Parties took place in Kigali, Rwanda, on 6–8 June 2018. The overall theme was ‘Youth participation in political processes: emerging trends of the negative aspects of money in politics’.
The Summer School unfolded in a context that recognized that youth participation in politics, especially by young women, either in the form of direct representation in political structures or within less formal modes of political engagement, remains limited across Africa.
These low levels of active participation and influence by young people unfold in a situation where young people constitute a very large and growing proportion of the general population.
Click here to see the report.
The Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) has cited violence as a leading factor discouraging young women from actively participating in politics.
Zimbabwe will hold general elections next year, and women participation is pivotal as they constitute 52% of the population.
In a recent report titled “Do middle class women defend democracy?” RAU noted that young women shied away from politics mainly because of violence, polarization, corruption and nepotism.
“The general consensus was that political participation is risky and violence is too frequently a part of the contest; and politics are strongly associated with corruption and nepotism,” read part of the report.
Other reasons given for poor participation of young women in politics were difficulties encountered in registering to vote.
“The young women want to participate but are failing to find spaces they are comfortable in to express themselves politically, and it is important for them to see that sitting out is also a political statement.
Click here to read the report.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW, is an international legal instrument that requires countries to eliminate discrimination against women in all areas and promotes women’s equal rights. CEDAW is often described as the international bill of rights for women.