GENEVA - Despite young people worldwide driving historic pro-democracy and accountability movements, they face unprecedented levels of State-sponsored repression and violence, legal exclusion and digital surveillance, a UN expert said today.
"Governments and international institutions publicly celebrate youth engagement whilst systematically suppressing critical youth dissent," said Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. She called for binding power-sharing, decriminalisation, accountability and reparations for human rights violations and an end to paternalistic barriers.
Romero's report to the UN General Assembly presents a stark assessment of the global state of youth civic space. Informed by consultations with over 500 youth-led organisations and activists across nearly 100 countries, the report documents not only all the youth activism that is not related to protests, but also the surge in "Gen-Z" youth mobilisation driven by systemic economic exclusion, corruption and a profound crisis of trust in traditional political institutions.
"Youth activism is deeply personal, political, values-based and rooted in lived experience. The youth have become our guardians of conscience," the expert said.
Society routinely dismisses youth as naïve and lazy, and public authorities often portray them as manipulated by foreign actors when demanding change. When movements gain traction, States weaponise national security and anti-terrorism laws to frame youth protests as riots, and activism as extremism or treason. Security forces have increasingly deployed excessive force, live ammunition, less lethal weapons and mass arbitrary detentions against student and youth protesters. Concurrently, educational institutions - historically hubs for critical thinking - are turning into hyper-securitised spaces marked by police violence, surveillance and disciplinary sanctions.
"While young people leverage decentralised, digital-first tools to bypass traditional hierarchies, States and private actors counter with invasive AI, biometric tracking, network shutdowns and shadow bans," Romero said.
The report specifically cautions against blanket age-based social media bans, warning they strip youth of their primary civic space. Underpinning these threats, rigid registration laws prohibit informal collectives from accessing traditional funding or opening bank accounts, while people under 18 face legal bans from organising or leading associations independently.
To move from tokenistic consultations to genuine power-sharing, the report outlines a comprehensive blueprint for States, educational institutions, digital platforms and civil society based on binding youth participation, guaranteeing informal youth collectives the right to organise and embedding mandatory youth participation in decision-making.
The report highlights the need for binding participation, real power-sharing youth engagement in a safe and inclusive civic space and the safeguarding academic freedoms by protecting peaceful student assembly on and off campuses and eliminating arbitrary disciplinary sanctions for political expression.
"States must hold private companies for inadequate designs, ensure comprehensive reparations on surveillance-related chilling effects and mental health support to combat activist burnout," Romero said.
"Protecting freedom of peaceful assembly and association rights means recognising young people not as passive beneficiaries of democracy, but as active participants in building it."
