الوصف
Across Africa and the Global South, youth participation in governance has long been reduced to symbolic gestures — youth councils with no decision-making power, consultations that produce no binding outcomes, and representation frameworks that seat young people in the room without giving them a real voice. This session challenges that model.In West Africa, a growing number of youth-led initiatives are demonstrating that a different approach is possible: one where young people design the process, set the agenda, and hold institutions accountable. The World Social Forum 2026, taking place for the first time in West Africa, is the right moment to bring these experiences together, learn from each other, and build the alliances needed to take them further.FOSDA brings to this session two concrete and complementary cases from its work in Ghana and the ECOWAS region:The Ghana Youth Manifesto — a participatory, youth-led document articulating young people's perspectives, priorities and policy recommendations on employment, Education, peace & security, civic participation, governance and development, Health & SRHR, Climate change, Environment and Energy, built from communities upward.The ECOWAS Youth Parliament initiative — an effort to institutionalise youth voice within West Africa's premier regional governance framework, moving from informal influence to formal representation.Together, these two initiatives illustrate the full spectrum of youth governance work: from grassroots mobilisation to institutional reform. This session uses them not as a showcase, but as a springboard for collective learning with participants from across the world.