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SEMINAR: New ways of youth participation based on Information and Communication Technologies Read the Seminar report [pdf 4,12MB]
Rationale and background of the seminar The Council of Europe, the continent's oldest treaty organisation which groups together 47 countries, is promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Participation is a crucial element to promote these values. Over the last two decades, the Council of Europe has paid a special attention to this issue, mainly by considering two specific aspects of participation: the declining figures of participation in elections almost everywhere in Europe on the one side, as well as the presumably fading use of traditional forms of participation (political parties, trade unions, traditional civil society organisations) by young people on the other side. More recently, technological developments gave young people many new opportunities to make their voices heard and to participate in society in alternative ways (e.g. online fora, SMS actions, e-democracy, m-democracy). These trends and developments have led to a reflection process within the Council of Europe, which has found its expression in a number of texts and programmes. One of those is the training programme of the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Youth and Sport, which promotes the building and strengthening of open and democratic European societies, and features youth participation as one of its priorities in 2006-2009. Some important legal instruments of the Council of Europe also tackle the issue of new ways of participation based on information and communication technologies. The Charter on the participation of young people in local and regional life, which was produced by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in 2003, refers to the fact that “information and communication technologies can offer new possibilities for informing and allowing the participation of young people. They can be used to exchange a wide variety of information, and increase the participation of young people”. In 2004, the Committee of Ministers - the highest authority in the Council of Europe - have issued a recommendation on electronic governance, looking at the technological side of the development of our societies, and made a number of proposals, reflections and recommendations for the Member States. The topic of the seminar on “New ways of participation based on Information and
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