Skip to content
Citizen Infrastructure

Children & young people's assemblies

Children are almost entirely shut out of electoral democracy — they’re too young to vote. Yet they have a clear right to be heard on decisions that affect them (it’s written into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). Deliberative formats like citizens’ assemblies are one of the few places that right can become real — and over the last few years, assemblies involving under-18s have taken off.

Three ways it’s being done

Section titled “Three ways it’s being done”
  • Parallel — a children’s assembly runs alongside an adult one on the same topic, with touchpoints to share the learning journey and the recommendations. Scotland’s climate assembly ran an under-16 process beside the adult one; Ireland’s biodiversity assembly did the same.
  • Standalone — a children- or youth-only assembly, chosen by democratic lottery, with no adults in the room (e.g. a Swiss youth assembly on mental health).
  • Lowered age — adult assemblies that simply include 16- and 17-year-olds, even in countries where they can’t yet vote.

Sortition without an electoral register

Section titled “Sortition without an electoral register”

You usually can’t draw children from a census or voter roll, so selection has to get creative — while staying a genuine lottery (so it’s about chance, not merit, popularity, or being the teacher’s favourite). Two routes: work through schools (complemented by other associations, since school isn’t a positive space for every child), or build your own dataset — as Ireland did, putting an open invitation to all 7-to-17-year-olds out through schools, social-work services, and a children’s news bulletin, then drawing a stratified sample.

”But can children handle the complexity?”

Section titled “”But can children handle the complexity?””

The most common objection, and it mostly dissolves on inspection:

  • Ask it of adults too. Randomly-selected adults aren’t subject experts either; good assemblies are designed to be inclusive and to support different learning styles. (The average reading age in the UK is around 12 — so a well-run adult assembly should already be pitching its materials there.)
  • Children bring what adults can’t. They have first-hand experience of being children, and they ask “why?” about norms adults stopped questioning long ago.
  • It’s a right, not a favour. A protectionist reading of children’s rights can’t override their right to participate — the two work together. So the real question isn’t whether to involve children, but how to do it safely and well.

Citizens now, not “the future”

Section titled “Citizens now, not “the future””

Especially on climate, children get cast as “the leaders of tomorrow.” But they’re here now, affected now, and capable now. And the impact ripples outward: a child’s participation pulls in their family, school, and friends, and many alumni keep advocating for years. One member of Ireland’s assembly persuaded her village’s horticulture group to stop pesticide spraying — and later told that story to the UN in Geneva.

See it in practice in the Run Reports, and follow the threads to intergenerational deliberation and deliberation as enfranchisement.

Sources

Section titled “Sources”