Youth Papers programme — episode one

Pal-Think for Strategic Studies opened the first radio episode of the programme “Youth Papers”, broadcast on the local Zaman radio station on Thursday, within the second phase of the Civic Education project funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — a project aimed at creating young leaders able to spread democratic values and critical thinking in their society and to reach decision-making positions.

Taking part in the first episode was civic-education body member and researcher Leen al-Zanati, who discussed her research paper prepared within the project's activities, titled “Ways of advancing the political participation of Palestinian youth after the postponement of the Palestinian elections”, together with civic-education member and researcher Jumana Abu Sinjar, who presented her research paper titled “Mechanisms for strengthening students' participation in community work”.

Abu Sinjar opened by saying that many young people know nothing of community work or of civil-society organisations, adding that the difficult economic factor stands as an obstacle before the youth, since most are unemployed and cannot afford the transport fare to attend trainings.

She said that despite all the prevailing conditions — division, poverty, and unemployment — young people must strive hard to shoulder their own responsibilities and those of their society.

Abu Sinjar stressed that civil-society organisations must raise young people's awareness and assist them.

She continued: “Unfortunately many organisations exploit young people under the name of volunteering and load them with burdens beyond their capacity, and this is what drives youth away from community work. By contrast, some civil-society organisations have a clear volunteering plan for young people and provide rich, solid training programmes — such as Pal-Think, where we were some 23 trainees in a single project over several months, and all of us benefited from it and went out to society to spread the awareness and information we gained through the research papers, the radio broadcasts, and new media.”

The researcher explained that among the most important benefits of students' participation in community work is meeting people intellectually different from themselves; it also increases their self-confidence by developing and strengthening soft and personal skills such as public speaking, discussion, and presenting ideas.

She concluded: “The division is the first and greatest obstacle, because it is not only political but intellectual, social, and cultural.”

Some young people have been forced to work in partisan organisations solely for the money. Therefore, every civil-society organisation must set a clear vision for volunteering and for attracting youth, giving them the opportunity to express their views and needs, and the government should allocate a unified budget for the organisations to advance them.

Researcher Leen al-Zanati spoke about young people's political participation after the postponement of the elections, saying that political participation is one of the most important tools for realising young people's wishes and aspirations amid the clear and deliberate marginalisation they face from decision-makers.

She noted that only 0.9% of young people work in senior professions, explaining that the absence of elections and the political division have compounded their frustration.

Al-Zanati explained that marginalisation by politicians and decision-makers, the Palestinian division, the occupation, the obstruction of elections, poverty, and high unemployment are among the most important factors weakening youth political participation.

She added that elections are the only avenue for young people's political participation, given their near-total absence from decision-making in the parties and unions.

Al-Zanati held that “awareness must be raised among the youth through civil-society organisations and the media, followed by organising pressure and advocacy campaigns to press decision-makers to hold new elections.”

She noted that the Palestinian Basic Law enshrines the term political participation in Article 26, deeming it a human right guaranteed to every Palestinian to exercise individually or collectively, and lists several forms of it, such as holding public office and the right to stand and vote in elections, among others.

In the researcher's view, decree-law No. 1 of 2021, amending law No. 1 of 2007 on general elections, wholly deprives young people of standing for the presidency, since it set the age threshold at 40.

She concluded by reviewing the mechanisms of political participation — holding presidential and legislative elections — noting that young people are bound to mount pressure and advocacy campaigns to work on changing the election law and pressing decision-makers to hold elections.

It is worth noting that this radio programme is one of the activities of the Civic Education project; it aims to present the research papers produced by the project's trainees.