Dubai Future Forum: Bringing children to the decision-making table
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Dubai: Every child has the right to have a say in their future. But how can his voices be heard and included in the decisions that will shape his future?
This question was addressed at the launch of a book by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at the ongoing Dubai Future Forum. The Dubai Future Forum is an annual event organized by the Dubai Future Foundation at the Museum of the Future and is the largest gathering of futurists in the world.
The Unicef manual, titled ‘Designing a Youth-Centered Journey to the Future – A Foresight Handbook for Youth’, provides organizations with practical and effective ways to bring young people to the decision-making table, to develop strategies and programs that are focused on the future.
But what exactly is youth forecasting?
“Foresight is a structured way of thinking about the future. It is, in part, about anticipating how the world is changing so that we can be proactive, not reactive. But foresight also has to do with people. It’s not just about flying cars and technological advances. It’s about humanity and our values, and who we will be in that future. Youth foresight is the same structured way of thinking about the future, but focusing on youth and the issues that affect them,” Adam Sharpe, youth foresight specialist at Unicef Innocenti – Global Research and Foresight Office, told Gulf News. .
“Children have rights, they are a particular group, so they need special attention and commitment,” he added.
Children have rights, they are a particular group, so they need particular care and commitment.
– Adam Sharpe, Youth Foresight Specialist at Unicef Innocenti – Global Research and Foresight Office
Practical guidelines
The eight Unicef Youth Prospective fellows at the launch of the manual at the Dubai Future Forum.
The playbook was also co-authored by young people – Unicef youth foresight fellows from around the world, who were also present at the book launch and helped the audience to more practically understand the benefits of engaging young minds in decision-making processes.
When it comes to youth engagement in any capacity, you need to meet them at their experience level and build with them. Young people have a particular perspective they bring based on their realities and the unique struggles they face. Therefore, expecting them to meet minimum experience criteria excludes large numbers of young people from processes that would otherwise benefit from youth representation. Good advice would be to build your capacity to provide them with the skills and experience while they continue to contribute to the process and decision making.
– Iman Bashir, Kenya Youth Foresight Fellow 2022
As part of the workshop, eight audience members were asked to step forward if they were working on a project for which they needed ideas. Each of these projects was assigned a group, led by one of Unicef’s youth foresight fellows. By implementing some of the practical guidelines from the manual, each group was able to generate innovative ideas for different types of projects.
Beyond tokenism
The fellows helped the audience understand through a workshop how young voices can help create better solutions for the future.
Speaking at the pre-workshop forum, these young changemakers advocated for their place at the table, highlighting all the ways young voices can help formulate policies that are more inclusive and effective.
Representatives from Egypt and Kenya spoke about how the work they did with Unicef focused on attracting more diverse voices in the world of foresight from the Global South, including countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
Another Unicef Youth fellow, Ricardo Pineda Guzmán from Honduras, spoke about the need to take young people’s voices seriously.
Addressing the forum, he said: “I am a climate activist and youth leader, and I want to talk about broader issues. A problem that everyone is aware of is the symbolic one: young people are hired just to take photographs. It’s something we’ve worked on because we really want to get involved, get our hands dirty and play a role in transforming the future. The second issue is that young people are not only beneficiaries of these policies. We want to participate in the creation of policies. It’s not just that we are going to suffer the effects of climate change, for example, and not the current generation. This is no longer the time to point fingers. Some people might talk about how they are already supporting young people because they may have an assistant who is young, but we are not talking about that. “It is not about young people serving you, but about you serving young people and asking how we can support them on the issues they are passionate about and help them achieve the changes they want to bring to this world.”
The Youth Foresight Handbook provides a crucial opportunity: it allows any organization to navigate the space of meaningful youth engagement and foresight in a simple and workable way.
Meaningful youth engagement must enable participation that is collaborative, respectful, and transfers ownership. Therefore, I welcome this publication as a plan for a future that proactively engages young people.
– Ricardo Pineda Guzmán, 2022 Youth Prospective Scholarship from Honduras
Audience members volunteered with projects they were working on, and guidelines from the handbook for implementing youth foresight were used in each project to find innovative solutions.
Jacob Ellis, a Unicef UK fellow, spoke about how the Aberfan mining disaster in Wales in 1966 was one of the reasons he was motivated to become an agent of change.
The Aberfan disaster, which killed 144 people, mostly children, is remembered each year in the South Wales community as tragic and completely avoidable.
“Every year, it’s a reminder that if we had been foresight and thought about the long-term approach, those kids would have done bigger things. That is what we hope to achieve with this manual. May those who use the manual continue to solve those problems and prevent some of our biggest disasters and literally save children’s lives. It’s about thinking differently, challenging ourselves and being bolder. Involving young people in decision-making is not only a good thing to do, but it is their right,” she stated.
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