Youth in a Box: Where We Search For Belonging
This week I had the honor of attending the UN ECOSOC Youth Forum in NYC. I found myself in absolute awe while I was walking up the steep steps, the numerous flags greeting me with a wave from the wind. My heart was practically beating out of my chest as I entered the revolving doors, my feet tapping the linoleum floor. I was highly anticipating rich dialogue, a space where young people could engage in challenging discussions, co-create solutions, and think together. Instead, once I trekked through those hallways, I found myself sitting on the floor, waiting in line for tickets that didn’t even guarantee my entry into the main room of the event, and then found myself navigating the overflow room that turned participants into passive observers, listening to tightly timed prepared remarks that left no space for interaction. This being said, the speakers were brilliant, and had immense insights, but could not be met with the response I felt that they deserved. Even attempts at cultivating my own conversation was met with very little enthusiasm, though by this point I noticed significant disengagement regardless. This strongly suggested to me that the environment itself discouraged meaningful participation. Youth engagement was emphasized, yet very little opportunity for meaningful engagement actually happened. Presence was mistaken for participation.
By the second day these tensions had taken on a more conceptual container, and youth were named as political actors, builders, and changemakers, yet there was little effort to co-design or shape conversations with them. Participation, while no small feat by any stretch, felt performative, valuing polished, rehearsed contributions over authentic, responsive engagement that, as I previously said, these statements truly deserved. Crises themselves are not polished, and yet young people were expected to present refined versions of themselves, stripped of any uncertainty, contradiction, and humanity.
This contradiction showed its face even further in how I noticed the SDGs themselves were approached. While these are inherently interconnected, and were designed that way, they were discussed in isolation, as though complex, overlapping issues could be meaningfully addressed and represented within neatly separated discussions. Brilliant conversations around water, energy, housing, and education rarely intersected, in spite of their deep interdependence. In this way, I actually found that this mirrored the way participation was handled, ideas were siloed, just as we were.
By the third day, the contradictions extended even further into the assumptions shaping participation. There was frequent reference to knowledge sharing, yet little space for dialogue and exchange. If individuals don’t feel comfortable or empowered to contribute, can we call it participation? And if participation is indirect or heavily controlled, should the responsibility fall on individuals to insert themselves into the conversation, or on the system to create spaces where their contributions are genuinely welcomed and engaged with?
These questions become even more pressing when considering the structural barriers that shape who is able to be present in the first place, be it travel constraints, visa limitations, financial access, and the realities of migration. Youth participation is not simply about invitation, it is about access, stability, and belonging. The overflow room was a prefect example of this. It had the potential for dialogue, yet without any facilitation, it became a space of passive consumption. People turned to their phones, documenting rather than engaging. When participation is not intentionally designed into a space, it won’t emerge on its own. Even in a forum dedicated to youth, the default was hierarchical. Learning was done to us, not with us.
This raises deeper questions about how young people are prepared to engage in spaces like this. If our education systems emphasize individual competition over collective learning, it is unsurprising that participation feels uncertain or unnatural. The same structures that shape how we learn may also shape how we show up in global conversations, conditioned to listen rather than contribute. The issue here isn’t a lack of willingness or capacity. Young people bring energy, insight, and urgency, But without the tools, spaсe, and trust to direct that energy, it remains constrained. Rather than being supported in building new systemic structures, youth are often asked to fit into existing ones. They are forced to shape their ideas within predestined boundaries instead of being empowered to create their own. In the end, the question is not simply whether youth are invited into these spaces, but what kind of presence they are allowed to have once they arrive.
If participation is limited to observation, dialogue replaced with performance, and contribution defined by pre-existing structures, then belonging becomes something we search for rather than feel. The reality of it is, the challenges being discussed are not neat, and neither are the people working to solve them. And so young people will remain in the margins of spaces built in their name, but unintegrated. We, in many ways, are youth in a box, where we search not only for a seat at the table, but for the freedom to help build it.
