VNR 2025 Joint contribution by Deutscher Bundesjugendring, the UN Youth Delegates for Sustainable Development and Greenpeace Germany on the forthcoming 2025 VNR report, with the involvement of various youth participation bodies and delegate programmes

Young people are asserting their right to participation, which is vital for implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Young people are growing up in the midst of multiple crises for which they are not responsible. Participation allows them to experience agency, which is essential for creating a just and healthy future for all.

Youth participation is vital in engendering a sense amongst young people that the processes and institutions on which society rests have legitimacy. Ultimately, it is they who will implement the political decisions made today in decades to come.

Young people make an indispensable contribution to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. They have creative and innovative ideas and approaches for resolving global and local problems. They also have unique expertise which should be incorporated into national and international decision-making processes if they are not to risk being incomplete and ineffective.

One example of successful youth participation since the last VNR in 2021 has been the establishment of the Coordination Office for Youth Participation in Climate Policy at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate, which is coordinated and organised by the German Federal Youth Council. The quality standards and guidelines governing this process were developed with and by young people. The process creates a framework within which youth associations and organisations can obtain the information they need to enable them to select the issues they want to get involved in and on which they want to express to legislators and decision-makers their opinions and demands.

One example of best practice in Germany is the UN Youth Delegates for Sustainable Development programme, which has been in existence since 2002. The Youth Delegates for Sustainable Development repeatedly show the effectiveness of recognising young people as experts on their own lived reality. Negotiations on sustainability issues, for example at the United Nations Environment Assembly, produce imaginative, innovative and enhanced results when young people are involved in the process.

The youth participation formats established by the federal ministries in Germany show how young people can be given a structurally established seat at the negotiating table and easier access to the responsible politicians and decision-makers. The youpaN project at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, for instance, gives young people the right to have their voices heard and to cast their votes as part of a national multistakeholder platform for sustainable development. They engage in discussions with politicians and decision-makers and were actively involved in the drafting of the paper on Germany’s implementation of the UNESCO “ESD for 2030” programme.

This statement was drafted jointly by the German Federal Youth Council, the UN Youth Delegates for Sustainable Development and Greenpeace Germany with the involvement of various youth participation bodies (Coordination Office for Youth Participation in Climate Policy, Youth working group on foreign climate policy, youpaN) and delegate programmes (young delegates from NAJU (Youth Association for the Protection of Nature) to the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) and the Children and Youth Major Group to the UN Environment Programme, for example a sustainability activist from Kenya).