Why are we working on this?

It’s wrong that children are routinely excluded from democratic processes. Under-18s represent a third of the world’s population yet, unlike adults, most have no direct say in the rules and laws that govern their lives. CRIN champions children’s right to vote, but while children’s disenfranchisement remains a reality, there must be other ways to meaningfully engage children in the decision affecting their - and all of our - futures.

Promisingly, a growing number of deliberative democratic processes at local, city, municipal, national, and transnational levels - including citizens’ assemblies, juries, panels and participatory budgeting initiatives - are involving children. In a citizens’ assembly, a diverse representative group of people are selected by democratic lottery to learn, deliberate and make recommendations to decision-makers at different levels of governance.

Over 700 citizens’ assemblies have taken place from local to the global level, with the majority focused on addressing issues related to the climate crisis. While most citizens’ assemblies have thus far only included adults, there are promising examples of assemblies involving children - including a child as young as seven. There has been a lot of recent interest from policy makers and civil society alike to expand on the ways that children can participate.

Reimagining assemblies to better involve children offers significant opportunities to:

Enrich the intergenerational legitimacy, accountability and impact of such processes: adult assembly members are reminded of their responsibilities to uphold the rights of younger (and future) generations; children feel heard, valued and taken seriously.

Ensure recommendations better represent the views and ideas of all citizens.
Increase understanding of, and engagement in, the specific topics being discussed (i.e. climate action) and deliberative democracy among children and their families, schools and communities.

Why now?

Our work is a response to growing needs and interest across the deliberative democracy and children’s rights sectors. There is an increasing interest in how citizens’ assemblies can support the participation of under-18s in democracy and intergenerational citizens’ engagement. As a result, there is also a need to better support and equip policy-makers, civil servants and practitioners with the tools and knowledge on how to best involve children in these processes.

Due to current global circumstances - including a breakdown of trust in our democratic processes and leaders, increasing division and polarisation, increased pressure on multilateral systems, escalating human rights violations and the reality of the climate crisis - we also need to be establishing relationships between the critical issues of our time. CRIN wants to work and act in a way that encourages others to think about the ways their areas of work connect, and how we can collaborate. Rather than thinking about democracy and children’s rights as separate issues, our work is inherently cooperative in nature - bridging gaps between children’s rights, environmental and deliberative democracy sectors.

What do we want to achieve?

Ultimately, we want to see an increase in children’s participation and representation in deliberative democratic processes. This involvement should be intentional and significant, whereby a global community of children can genuinely contribute to high-level decision-making. To achieve this, we want to ensure that decision-makers, civil servants and practitioners know how to apply a children’s rights-based approach to their work; that they have access to the resources and materials they need; and that they can form a community of practice, exchanging their independent learning and ideas.

We want to change paternalistic narratives around children and democracy, moving away from the concept of children as passive consumers of our political systems. Children are active stakeholders and rights-holders in the world we all live in. By coming together, we hope to make ripples that build a larger wave, affecting change in a number of different sectors.

What are we doing so far, and how?

Key resources

Workshop: Join our full-day workshop on Involving Children and Youth in Citizens’ Assemblies as part of the Federation on Innovation in Democracy (FIDE)’s Spring School on Climate Assemblies, taking place from 4-6 June 2025 in Warsaw, Poland.