Righting a political wrong — children’s right to vote
Children enjoy a vast array of rights, but there’s one set that’s conspicuous by its absence: political rights. Best represented by the right to vote, political rights are a defining characteristic of any democracy, and one of their key purposes is to give voice to all citizens, including those who might otherwise not be heard. Without a vote, people wouldn’t be able to press their political representatives on issues that govern their lives and are important to them, including those affecting their human rights and the rights of others.
So where does that leave children? If there’s one population group that’s routinely excluded from this entitlement all over the world, it’s children. Why? Because apparently Every — Single — Child, making up almost a third of the global population, is irrational, incompetent, and too young. And much like the arguments used historically to deny women the vote, this oversized generalisation appears to require little justification.
If we take a look around the world, we’ll see that no country allows under-16s to vote in national elections and only a minority allow suffrage to children aged between 16 and 18 in national or municipal elections. While children do, of course, have freedom of expression and association and the right to be heard enshrined in international law, the occasions on which they can voice their opinions and have these carry weight in decision-making are rare.
In practice, children have very little say in the decisions that govern their lives. And what rubs salt into the wound is that they can’t even challenge the conditions that exclude them from decision-making in the first place precisely because they’re not legally entitled to.
Suffrage vs ‘participation’
In this context, how do children make do when standing up for their rights? Participation to this end exists for children in different forms and to different degrees, with some examples of participation being described as meaningful(vs meaningless ones?). Some are exclusively child-led in the form of student committees, municipal youth parliaments, peaceful protests, and even child workers unions like those in Bolivia and Peru which have significant political traction. There are also adult-led initiatives which depend exclusively on children’s participation, such as research in the form of consultations or reports on children’s issues.
These forms of participation all undoubtedly have value (though some more than others) and situate children in a position of influence (to varying degrees). But do they measure up to suffrage as a form of participation? If we put ourselves in children’s shoes, how many of us would tolerate being able to participate in all these different ways, except through voting? Most likely none of us. Probably because we like having our political rights, and the prospect of not having them is an affront to our conscience and democratic values.
Such a scenario would be hard for us to contemplate, but it’s one which societies expect children to concede to, even though, hypocritically, we wouldn’t tolerate the same rules that we apply to children. In the end, no variant of political participation should distract from the fact that almost a third of the world’s population is disenfranchised. The sheer size of this injustice speaks for itself, yet it’s an issue which barely gets addressed in children’s rights advocacy.
World map of children’s voting rights
The role of NGOs
So what do NGOs think about all this, how do they understand children’s participation and how best to achieve it? The answers are generally not encouraging. There are, of course, organisations that explicitly campaign for a lower voting age in their countries. But most organisations that involve children in some capacity in their work do so only in symbolic ways. These are defined as tokenism and decoration.
The first typically involves having a child give a short speech at the launch of a campaign or report developed by adults, but with little understanding of the issues addressed or how their presence adds value to the project. While the child in this case might appear to have been given a voice, there’s no assurance — or indeed any indication — that it will amount to anything more than a photo opportunity. Meanwhile decoration recedes further into pretence, as it describes when the sole purpose of children’s involvement is to elicit an emotional response from audiences, as is the case with TV advertisements which use images of sickly children to encourage donations.
Some commentators may purport these practices are done with the best intentions; but this is irrelevant. NGOs working on children’s rights issues should be more critical of children’s ‘participation’ when it has no real effect in the advancement of their rights. This is after all the ultimate objective: changing things from how they are to how they ought to be. And as defenders of children’s rights working to this end, wouldn’t it make more sense if the NGO community collectively recognised and advocated for a type of participation that would give children a real stake in their society?
A senseless waste
Political rights are an avenue through which children can exercise their rights with the aim of improving other rights. Giving children the vote would empower them to stand up for their own rights, rather than continue to leave this responsibility in the hands of well-intentioned but potentially paternalistic adults. Of course, child suffrage would not fix children’s rights issues or stop rights violations; but it would allow children to use their vote to complement their participation in other settings and maximise their presence and influence.
Children’s automatic exclusion from the electorate not only fundamentally undermines their political rights and engagement, it’s also an enormous waste of human ability and potential.
