Imagining the shape of substantive youth engagement in Southeast Asia
Written by Chan Shawn Kit
“Today’s youth are tomorrow’s future.”
The oft-cited phrase has made it common knowledge that the empowerment of youths is key to creating a liveable and prosperous future. In Southeast Asia, this adage holds especially true — in 2019, around 65% of the region’s population consists of youths 35 years and below. In a matter of years, this young demographic will succeed to most, if not all, positions of leadership and responsibility across Southeast Asia.
But what does it mean exactly for youths to be tomorrow’s future? Shaping the future starts with the present. How youth engagement in Southeast Asia is organized and executed at present will have an impact on how meaningful collaboration within the region will manifest in the years to come.
Thanks to globalization and technological advances, the potential of Southeast Asian youths today is likely to far exceed conventional expectations. Mainstream conversation on youth development has thus far zoned in on equipping them with future-ready skills through education and participation in policy discourses. However, concurrent to their studies, Southeast Asian youths also spearhead impactful grassroots, entrepreneurial, and organizational activities. While a number of these activities are initiated by ASEAN or other institutional bodies, others are self-started by youths, such as the ASEAN Youth Organization, the ASEAN Business Youth Association, and numerous startups operating across geographies.
There is a growing talent for self-organization amongst youths across Southeast Asia. With each successive generation, the initiative to make a difference differently becomes ever more evident. This poses the question: what shape should youth engagement across Southeast Asia take to future-proof the common prosperity of the region?
Youth centrality, to borrow the foreign policy term normalised by ASEAN, might be the way forward. At the 5th ASEAN-China-UN Development Programme (UNDP) Symposium in 2021, the ASEAN University Student Council Union called upon governments to “create an enabling and supportive ecosystem which offers more opportunities for young people to be involved in shaping and developing the policy and development of services and programmes in the region” to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Substantive engagement involves positioning Southeast Asian youths to co-create the future they envision, starting with the present. It involves a strategic reimagination of how Southeast Asia can function as a collective of disparate countries, by advancing youth-led transformative ideals, capacity-building, and organizational collaboration. Beyond the cloistered settings of mock conferences and debates, which carry little stake, youths can have a hand in shaping the real economy, politics, and society of the region.
Right now, concrete support for youth-led organizations, and inclusive policy participation, are two critical pillars that need to be imagined into form by youths, governments, and organizations in Southeast Asia.
Bolstering the resources and responsibilities of youth-led organizations
At present, the state of Southeast Asia’s stability and unity is by no means perfect. The political crisis in Myanmar continues unabated into its second year, and the ASEAN Member States (AMS) divided stance on the Russian-Ukraine war underscores divergences in national interests. While there is a compelling argument based on historic precedence that ASEAN’s modus operandi of mutual consensus and non-interference has kept interregional conflict to a minimum, there must be the gumption to explore and innovate the model of collective response to domestic and international crises. Conflict, after all, is the ultimate disruptor to ASEAN’s various plans for a shared Community.
Youths may fit into the picture by taking the role of the gardener in growing deep-rooted, cross-regional civil society organizations, commercial and social enterprises, and educational ecosystems. Research has shown that regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are critical in stabilizing tensions while providing early-warning and early-response systems in tandem with formal institutions. Beyond crisis management, NGOs and enterprises are important vehicles of norm-setting and value creation, which simultaneously makes conflict costlier to initiate while evolving the model of regional cooperation.
A distinct advantage of youth-founded, youth-led, and youth-driven regional organizations is in providing a direct and intimate avenue for ASEAN-youth engagement. According to the recent second edition of the ASEAN Youth Development Index, the top five sources by which students across the region learned about ASEAN were schools, paper, and digital media (see image below). While these mediums of exposure may be effective in raising cognitive awareness about ASEAN, they may be insufficient in inspiring and generating action for regional collaboration. Youth regional organizations close this gap by directly engaging youths through collaborative and real participation in the idea of ASEAN as a living community.
Source: Understanding How Young People See ASEAN: Awareness, Values, and Identity (ASEAN, 2021).
Youth organizations can also function as ancillaries to the multilateral regional architecture, outside the strict rigidities of national interests and politics. They form a space for the next generation of leaders to speak openly about their aspirations and values, while generating consensus and bargaining power to materialize the future that they dream of. This forms a bottom-up approach to identity formation to advance the relatively static ‘constructed’ and ‘inherited’ values of the ASEAN Identity (see image below), by offering a set of transformative values that the region can aspire towards.
Source: Narrative of ASEAN Identity (ASEAN, 2020).
Youths across Southeast Asia have proven themselves ready and capable to lead. A report by the British Council in 2021 found that a notable number of social enterprises across Southeast Asia were led by people under the age of 24, the highest proportion being that of Indonesia at 21.2%. Others, such as The Young SEAkers and Youth LEAD are forming self-started networks in bringing together youths in ASEAN and China, and the Asia Pacific region respectively. Each targets an important niche in youth development. The Young SEAkers equip youths with cross-border competencies and interpersonal soft skills to access career opportunities, while Youth LEAD facilitates the support for Young Key Populations (YKP) organizations and movements through grants and advocacy work.
With improved capacity-building, material support, and network facilitation, youth-led organizations can be formidable shapers of positive change in the region. This builds upon the agility that comes from being outside formal institution structures, being closely connected to local communities, and the benefit of access to the most up-to-date education and information.
Imagine, for example, if a regional youth organization centered around mental health was able to invest in building a repository of language and grassroots resources, which enables them to deploy and aid affected youths’ post-trauma reconciliation in disaster zones across Southeast Asia. Empowering youth-led organizations to meaningfully aid those they have an affinity to is reason enough to place a bet on their transformative impacts.
Integrating youths into substantive policy participation
Crucially, youths and youth-led organizations cannot be separated from policy-making spheres, as substantive engagement comes only with meaningful participation. Policies have powerful afterlives, and decisions made in the present will affect the future in which youths will be the caretakers of. Moreover, the ‘youth’ is not a monolithic group — the variety of interest groups, and the element of generational shifts, means that ‘youth’ needs and ideals will consistently change.
The process of youth engagement must incorporate sufficient flexibility and open-mindedness to adjust iteratively. Youths themselves can be valuable points of reference for when the needle has to be shifted, as they are generally more plugged in to the trends and preferences of their generation, and those succeeding them.
While there is widespread consensus that policy participation should be extended to youths, relatively fewer commentators have adequately succeeded in phrasing how it should look like. A plausible reason may be the difficulty in making a case for youths being entrusted with the same capabilities and responsibilities as seasoned policymakers. This is a misconception, as the value which youths bring to the table is something entirely different.
As Salimah Idzaturrohim from the ASEAN Studies Centre thoughtfully points out, youths and their attribute of ‘rebelliousness’ can be viewed as a net positive trait. For youths do not accept the condition of their environment at face value, but actively think and rebel against it with the aim of innovation and improvement. In an era where ‘consultative governance’ is an increasingly common motto for those in power, youths constitute a unique perspective for change and disruption within the larger body of stakeholders in policymaking.
Moreover, youths can act as connectors to the wider youth demographic. An investigation into the state of social inclusion by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) found that in most parts of Southeast Asia, wealth, gender, and education formed significant barriers to political participation amongst youths. While the general improvement of socio-economic statuses should remain a key priority, privileged youths can concurrently help to bring disenfranchised and marginalized groups into the fold of political activity. However, this will necessitate that youths are empowered to speak authoritatively, and actualize concrete solutions, to persuade others to participate as well.
The future starts with today
Many times over, youths have demonstrated the value of their self-started organizations and in policy participation. It is an acknowledged reality that they are unable to achieve their fullest potential without the support of those who are well experienced and established. However, the potential is still there to be recognized, and unlocking it will require a boldly evolving shape of substantive youth engagement in Southeast Asia.
The shape is one that requires daring and imagination. It is one where governments and institutions in ASEAN support the growth and independence of youth-led organizations. It is one where youths can demonstrate their capability to be beneficial partners to transform Southeast Asia into a region where common prosperity can be realized. For today’s youths to be tomorrow’s future, the future must be entrusted to them starting with today.
About the authors: Chan Shawn Kit is the Research and Thought Leadership Director of The Young SEAkers (Singapore). The article is edited by Natalia Maluquer De Motes Woo and Theron Tham from the Research and Thought Leadership Team.
The opinions and views of the author(s) contained in the article does not necessarily represent the views of The Young SEAkers and its constituent chapters.
