24th February marks the first anniversary of the brutal and unprovoked aggression by Russia against Ukraine, a then-fellow Council of Europe member state. The devastation and destruction of lives and property across Ukraine sadly continues to this day and young people have also suffered greatly as a result.

Due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, 44 youth infrastructure facilities were destroyed or damaged, with losses exceeding 2,5 million EUR.  An additional 57 youth facilities are currently under Russian occupation with no reliable information concerning their status.

The Chernihiv Regional Youth Centre’s fate illustrates the overall situation in Ukraine: it was destroyed after a Russian rocket attack in February 2022. The youth centre was in an architectural monument from 1939 - originally a cinema - and it regularly hosted a wide array of youth activities. Before its destruction, the centre provided services to over 240,000 young people (25% of the region’s population).

Despite the immense difficulties created by the ongoing war, youth workers in Ukraine continued their work with and in support of young people. They got involved in humanitarian aid, provided help to traumatized young people and kept developing youth civil society to become more resilient in the face of the war’s impacts on young people’s lives.

Following the decision of the Council of Europe’s Joint Council of Youth on 12 October 2022, the European Youth Foundation (EYF) has launched a special call for projects to support young people from Ukraine. 

The call has been very successful and timely, and by 1 March 2023, eight projects have been supported, for a total amount of €107.374. Out of the supported projects, four are carried out by youth organisations based in Ukraine, and four by youth organisations based in Armenia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovakia. All projects involve directly young people from Ukraine and the themes of the projects range from youth peace activism trainings, supporting young people’s access to employment, working with young people on mental health issues, research on young people’s situations, youth integration in host societies, and promoting social cohesion through youth work and sports activities.

The complete list of projects supported can be found on the dedicated EYF website. The call is still open and applications are being received on a rolling basis.

On 24 February, Alice Bergholtz, vice-chair of the Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ) addressed the Committee of Ministers’ ad hoc working group set up to organise the 4th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe (16-17 May 2023, Reykjavik, Iceland).

At the invitation of the Presidency of Iceland of the Committee of Ministers, the Advisory Council provided answer on what needs to be done to ensure the Council of Europe meets current and future challenges and the expectations of future generations. The Presidency of Iceland of the CM has placed young people at the heart of its priorities, and is determined to ensure that the voice of young people is heard in the leadup to and during the 4th Summit of the Council of Europe.

Under the heading “Youthless policy is useless policy”, Alice Bergholtz urged the member states to invest more in the Council of Europe to ensure it has sufficient means to fully promote its values, to safeguard rights, responsibilities, and freedoms in Europe. Alice Bergholtz also urged the Organisation to claim the leading role in peacebuilding in Europe.

Finally, Alice Bergholtz encouraged the Council of Europe to adopt more modern communication methods to increase its visibility; how will the citizens of Europe know about their rights if they do not know the Organisation exists?

Read the Advisory Council on Youth’s contribution to the open call issued by Iceland on the Council of Europe in the future

On 22 and 23 February, 16 young climate experts and activists met in the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg to exchange views on the effects of the climate crisis on young people, as well as to share experiences, practices and recommendations on youth participation in climate-related activities.

This will inform the work being done by a drafting group, composed of two members each of the European Steering Committee for Youth (CDEJ) and of the Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ) and a representative of the European Youth Forum (YFJ), which will prepare a draft Committee of Ministers recommendation on climate crisis and young people (working title). The drafting group members also took part in the meeting.

Support was given to the consultative meeting by Iceland, which is concerned about the increasing negative effects of environmental degradation and climate crisis on the enjoyment of human rights across the globe.  Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörd Gylfadóttir, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iceland and president of the Committee of Ministers, joined the participants to hear their conclusions at the end of the two-day meeting, stressing two of four priorities of the Icelandic presidency, the environment and children and youth.  The Minister was joined by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, who underlined the strong intergenerational dimension of the right to a safe and healthy environment.

Over 80 young activists, representatives of the youth civil society and of national authorities came together at the end of January for the Evaluation and follow-up conference of the youth campaign for revitalising democracy DEMOCRACY HERE | DEMOCRACY NOW.

The conference reconfirmed the importance of the Call for Action of the Youth Action Week and prioritised actions that should be a key focus in the follow-up project of the campaign. A plan of activities for 2023 was agreed with by participants, including activities and initiatives at national and regional levels. Several areas of advocacy were identified by participants for 2023 such as:

• Lowering the voting age to 16.
• Securing the relevant support and provisions for young people to stand in elections.
• Advocating for structures in decision making for youth participation at national and local level, such as local youth councils and national youth councils.
• Creating an enabling environment for youth civil society.

Two training courses for youth workers on human rights education with young Ukrainian refugees and host communities in Romania were held from 27 February to 4 March 2023 in Bucharest.

The courses were organised by the National Youth Foundation, the Timis County Youth Foundation and the Council of Europe, in the framework of the Democracy Here | Democracy Now youth project and were co-funded by the European Union.

The training courses aimed to develop the competences of youth workers to prepare, implement and evaluate human rights education activities and programmes based on the approaches of Compass – The Manual for Human Rights Education with Young People.

The courses brought together 42 participants, youth workers active in the 11 youth centres in Romania, as well as youth workers from youth civil society in Ukraine. 

The Council of Europe project “Youth for Democracy in Ukraine: Phase III” was launched on 8 February at the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, within the new Action Plan of the Council of Europe for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” 2023-2026. 

Participatory youth policy: a new long-term training programme

On 22 February 2023 representatives of the Project, the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine and the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service met in an online format to develop a plan to implement a long-term training programme for civil servants at local, regional and national levels to equip them with standards, tools and resources on strengthening youth policy and youth work at local and regional levels in removing barriers to youth participation. This long-term programme will include research of needs of civil servants, training of trainers, development of a training programme on participatory youth policy to be implemented in 2024 in different regions of Ukraine.

Following two years of change, the Youth Department’s management team came together for an intensive day of brainstorming and reflection to shape a shared vision of the youth sector.

Faced with new impetus to its work, sparked by the recognition, by the Secretary General and the High-level Reflection Group, of young people’s contribution to building sustainable democracies, and by Iceland’s presidency of the Committee of Ministers of young people as active democratic citizens to be included in all decision-making processes, the Youth Department is at an exciting junction in its long history.

On 27 January 2023, representatives of youth centres in the Council of Europe Quality Label for Youth Centres network came together in an online meeting to follow up on the main outcomes of the study visit and seminar for youth workers and representatives of youth centres providing youth work during war time in Ukraine.

The meeting was organised by the Council of Europe and the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg between 5-10 December 2022 with the participation of youth workers coming from Quality Labelled Youth Centres, namely De Hoge Rielen Youth Centre (Belgium), Killarney Youth Centre (Ireland), Timisoara Youth House (FITT) (Romania), Centre Cinqfontaines of the Service national de la jeunesse (Luxembourg).

It was agreed that the next European Platform for Youth Centres meeting held on 9-10 May in Strasbourg, will be another important moment to follow up on the various initiatives for cooperation between Quality Labelled Youth Centres and Ukrainian youth centres and youth workers.

The study session on AI was organised by the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Students Organisations (FEMYSO) in cooperation with the Youth Department of the Council of Europe. The course gathered 30 participants to help youth activists to understand the impact of AI on young people’s lives, particularly the  vulnerable ones, by recognising the unwanted consequences of AI.

Participants discussed the increasing digital divide and the insufficient research on the societal impact of AI; they flagged concerns regarding young citizens’ well-being, their access to fundamental human rights, and their democratic participation through the penetration of technology in our lives. Participants explored the European Convention on Human Rights and how AI threatens our human rights. They also identified shortcomings of the Convention, such as the lack of the protection of personal data.

As an outcome of the course, the group will co-create a public toolkit to support youth organisations in their advocacy work for effective regulation of AI in their countries. The group will also work on a workshop design to empower local communities and thirdly, on a policy proposal to submit to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) to support efforts to create a more cohesive Europe.