Youth Democratic Engagement

Youth Democratic Engagement

This project will explore ways to bring the youth into a participatory democracy. Observing that the “missing” youths, representing 70% of the Ivorian population under 35 years, as a critical determinant in democracy’s dysfunction or backsliding, the project will search ways to foster a youth democratic engagement to contribute to responsive, peaceful, and self-reliant democratization across Côte d’Ivoire by guaranteeing the right to vote for young people and increasing their number in possession of tools to advocate, understand, and react to community needs in a participatory fashion.

At a time when youths’ faith in the Ivorian institutions and democracy is at all-time lows, they need a greater voice because civic institutions are not going to work without consistent pressure and activism to protect them. Now that democracy is backsliding all over Africa, it is the moment to engage with youth civil society organizations — not just passively but actively participating in local chapters of a national group or a neighborhood association, which will be a critical building block for reinventing the relationship between youths and the state.

My intention as a researcher is to identify youths susceptible to efficiently contributing to focus groups on the production of videos, making it easy to transmit the youths’ standpoints and voices without watering down their message and preserving its dynamics and emotional impact. The participatory video will offer youths as democracy activists the occasion to engage in participatory discussion and reflection with their peers and initiate contacts and relations beyond their usual geographic, socio-economic, and sectorial limits.

Within the context of Côte d’Ivoire and the subject of democracy consolidation, the following diverse “worlds” inhabited by youths are of interest: youths in political movements and parties, civil society activists, so-called “fundamentalist/ engaged” Muslims, and student unionists. And due to male dominance within these “worlds” and the still timid engagement of young women in the democratic arena, the identification and mobilization of young women for this study will be a priority.

Your interview will be publicly shared, in part or in full, through inclusion in a final class project, inclusion in a public digital project accessible on the web using OHMS or a digital storytelling platform or other publishing tools. I may incorporate your narratives and ephemera into my research agenda at the International University of Grand Bassam, and into future scholarly publications in both written and digital project forms viewable at www.fdjeunes.org. Should your copyright-released interview materials be featured, they will remain part of the project until it is taken off-line or absorbed by an institutional archive.

You can elect to end your participation at any time before or during the interview. You can elect to release all or part of your interview after the interview using the provided release form. If you have any questions about this project or the ways in which your content has been used, you can contact Jean G. TOMPIHE, the researcher, the International University of Grand Bassamfaculty sponsors, or the Dean irb@iugb.org.