World Children’s Day: The Power of Young People as Changemakers

Written by Lukia Nomikos.

World Children’s Day is celebrated every year on 20th November to commemorate the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly in 1959. It offers each of us an entry-point to advocate, promote and celebrate children's rights, translating into dialogues and actions that will build a better world for all children.

Despite drastic improvements in survival, nutrition and education over recent decades, today’s children face an increasingly uncertain future. Climate change and ecological degradation are putting children’s most basic rights at risk, seriously affecting their access to health, food, water, clean air, education and protection, and the growing number of extreme weather events is putting more and more children’s lives in danger. As the impact of the climate crisis intensifies over time, it is the children and young people of today who will face its worst effects.

It should come as no surprise then that ‘eco-anxiety’ – the chronic fear of environmental doom – is on the rise, especially among the younger generations. A recent landmark survey of thousands of 16- to 25-year-olds found that most respondents were concerned about climate change, with nearly 60% saying they felt ‘very worried’ or ‘extremely worried’. This makes abundantly clear that “climate change is a real dimension into [young people’s] mental health problems.” Moreover, the survey revealed a widespread sense of powerlessness among young people, with many reporting they felt those in power were failing them by dismissing their distress, lying about the impact of actions taken, and not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.

But despite (or perhaps, because of) these feelings of anxiety, fear and powerlessness, the youth is refusing to sit idly by while those in power destroy our planet. They are fighting back. During the past few years, we have seen more and more children and young people speaking up and taking action against the climate crisis. We have seen them organise climate strikes and actively participate at global forums - most recently during the COP26 summit - as well as sue countries for climate inaction and generally raise the alarm on climate change.  

And this mass youth mobilisation we are seeing is not limited to strictly environmental issues. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, more clearly than ever, how inequality affects the rights of every child. From climate change, education and mental health, to ending racism and discrimination, children and young people are raising their voices on the issues that matter to their generation and calling for adults to create a better future. And it is about time those voices were heard. 

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every person under the age of 18 has the right to participate in the decision-making processes that impact them, and this includes a public forum to express their views, and support for them to do it. Climate change is threatening the lives and futures of all children. The decisions that are made on climate issues will quite literally determine their futures and therefore, young people must be allowed to have a say. 

This vital need for increased and improved stakeholder engagement in decision-making is of course something we as SVI talk about all the time and which underlines our Principles of Social Value. To make better decisions, we must be properly informed and to be properly informed, we must incorporate the voices and perspectives of those most affected by these decisions. Those who experience the effects of our global crises most intensely accumulate invaluable insights into how these issues can be tackled and will be best positioned to inform key decisions about policies and resources. Stakeholders must therefore be consulted and sufficiently involved in decision-making processes from start to finish. Otherwise, the way that we address climate change, and other pressing global issues, will be significantly hindered. 

And as UNICEF stresses, in relation to World Children’s Day, 20th November is a Global Day of Action for children, by children – meaning it is not only a day to protect, promote and support children’s rights but also a day to recognise and celebrate the power of children and young people to change the world. In other words, it is not only the rights of children that have value but also their voices, and therefore we must empower the youth to speak up about the issues they care about, provide platforms to amplify their voices, and listen to their concerns, demands and ideas. 

The fact that that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the world’s most ratified human rights treaty in history also speaks to the power of children to reunite us for the common good. “Working to improve children’s health and wellbeing can motivate all of us to save our planet for them and for ourselves.”

Youth leadership was also something that emerged as one of the key themes of our annual conference this year. The importance of empowering younger generations to lead the transition to a sustainable world was highlighted more than once during Social Value Matters 2021, with Charmian Love memorably noting that young people “don’t think linear – they think exponentially.” Giving more young people a seat at the table is not only fair given that they are the ones who will – and already are – suffering the brunt of the climate crisis, but will also challenge old ways of thinking, bring new ideas and perspectives to the conversation, and increase innovation – thus improving our chances of tackling the crisis.  

For all these reasons, “children and young people need to be recognised as the rightful heirs of this planet that we all share” and they must be allowed to have a say in what the future will look like. “We need to find new ways to systematically gather [children’s] input, not in a tokenistic way, but to really listen to what they have to say and let them participate as the citizens that they are,” and this means also including them in all climate negotiations and decisions. So, in the words of another one of our fantastic speakers at SVM2021, Irawadee Thawornbut, let’s change the question we ask young people from “what do you want to do when you grow up?” to “what do you want to do now?”