Integrating Children and Youth Participation into Resilience Planning

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 places obligations on States to provide opportunities for children to express their opinions and to have these opinions be taken seriously in matters that affect their lives. While many studies from around the world have shown that children and youth can meaningfully participate to inform a wide range of issues, wide-scale implementation of children’s participation and thus the realization of children’s rights, is still not widely achieved. In the context of planning for urban resilience, three cities in three diverse nations approached integration of children and youth into resilience planning, with varying success. While each city was able to support children’s voicing of perspectives facilitators also struggled with how to authentically integrate youth voices into a new realm of planning—for urban resilience. This article thus shares the approaches and objectives from each city and reflects on what can be learned from these experiences when trying to integrate children and youth opinions and perspectives into community planning, particularly when guided by international frameworks or agendas. While each city has some success in realizing children’s rights to participate, to a certain extent, lack of municipal frameworks for participation and lack of knowledge about and support for children’s participation among municipal leaders inhibited the realization of children’s participation.