Diversity and lived experience are still buzzwords in high-level policy and decision-making spaces. We need to move beyond tokenistic engagement of young people if we are going to tackle the world’s most pressing issues.
I am the UK Head Delegate to the Y7, the formal engagement group for young people to the G7. For six months we worked to gather the views of young people and shape them into policy recommendations under four key areas identified by the 2022 G7 German presidency: Sustainable Planet, Foreign and Security Policy, Healthy Lives, and Economic Stability and Transformation. This culminated in a week spent in Berlin advocating for these priorities with policy makers and politicians right up to the German Chancellor himself.
When the final G7 Leaders’ Communiqué was published, it set out some positive intentions regarding the climate crisis, gender inequality and international security. But beyond the Communiqué’s recognition of current global challenges, I was left feeling disappointed that ambitious, targeted actions underpinned by sustained financial resourcing were lacking. Specifically, young people were not even mentioned once. Overall, issues regarding other marginalised groups were limited in ambition and principally siloed to development issues.
The Leaders’ Communiqué reads as out of touch and resistant to tangible reform, failing to reflect the diverse global leadership we need in 2022. So, I decided to do my research into the demographic make-up of the G7 leaders and all things considered, the outcomes above are no surprise:
- eight out of nine are men;
- the average age is 60;
- eight out of nine are white;
- seven out of nine have at least one parent who was either a banker, politician, former Prime Minister, doctor or government official.
The make-up of this group of leaders does not fairly reflect the diversity of our global population with an obvious lack of young people, not to mention people of colour, from low socioeconomic backgrounds, those of marginalised genders and sexualities or with disabilities.
The binary, Eurocentric approach the G7 leaders have taken to addressing global issues highlights a fundamental and urgent need to radicalise political decision making. National and international policy agendas that aim to address issues such as climate change, health and security threats need to move beyond tokenistic engagement with marginalised communities to genuine lived experience-led policy making.
Lived experience is intersectional and cannot be bound up neatly into one issue. Our markers of identity enmesh with and influence every area of life from how we experience healthcare provision and education, to how we are impacted by climate change. Reflecting on my own identity as a young woman of colour, I feel more than just underrepresented by those making the decisions at the G7 and other high-level forums. I also feel the injustice of knowing that my voice and those of my peers is being disregarded despite our experiences making us subject matter experts on a lot of these issues.
In my day job, I work in criminal justice policy with experience in the sector of domestic abuse and reducing reoffending. I have learned a stark lesson about the importance of getting lived experience to lead this work. I cannot overstate the importance of getting under the belly of an issue, understanding its nuances and challenges by working directly with those at the core, and finding synergies with other issues to work through the complexities. Progress will never be achieved successfully or sustainably without diverse lived experience properly integrated into the way policy commitments and reforms are shaped.
It is also important to acknowledge the power dynamics of these spaces as well as the interactions with youth engagement groups. There is an expectation that young people should do this work and offer our invaluable insight for free and in our own time. Recently, there has been an explosion in the creation of youth advisory panels and forums to inform organisations and political processes. But they are almost always voluntary positions and the lack of economic value that is placed on them speaks volumes. It reinforces a hierarchy of whose views and priorities matter more. As was evident from the G7 outcomes, young people often sit on the peripheries of influencing with no voting rights and are excluded from the high-level decision making.
It is time for change, especially with the challenges the world is facing right now. Without strong, ambitious resolutions, these challenges are already on track to evolve into crises that our current global leaders will not be alive to see. It will be people of my generation and those that follow who will be dealing with the overwhelming challenges that current governance systems are perpetuating. Now we may be schoolchildren, interns and junior staff, but we will be the ones in charge of navigating the huge environmental and socioeconomic challenges that are only likely to escalate. We already have insight into how we can mitigate these issues which are already priorities in our everyday lives.
I am hopeful we can get to a place where intersectional, minority-inclusive leadership, consultation and decision making runs throughout policy making. Processes like the Y7 engagement group are an important avenue to open up these conversations and start bridging the disparities between the people who make the decisions and the people who are affected by them.
Safia Sangster is a youth activist and the Head Delegate for the UK delegation to the Y7, supported by the Future Leaders Network. She currently works as a Reducing Reoffending Policy Advisor in the criminal justice sector. Prior to that, she worked in policy and public affairs for an anti-domestic abuse organisation.
Image credit: Jane Campbell on ShutterStock