The youth rights movement (also known as youth liberation) seeks to grant the

rights Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...

to young people that are traditionally reserved for adults. This is closely akin to the notion of evolving capacities within the

children's rights Children's rights or the rights of children are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.

movement, but the youth rights movement differs from the children's rights movement in that the latter places emphasis on the welfare and protection of children through the actions and decisions of adults, while the youth rights movement seeks to grant youth the liberty to make their own decisions autonomously in the ways adults are permitted to, or to abolish the legal minimum ages at which such rights are acquired, such as the

age of majority The age of majority is the threshold of legal adulthood as recognized or declared in law. It is the moment when a person ceases to be considered a minor (law), minor, and assumes legal control over their person, actions, and decisions, thus te ...

and the

voting age A legal voting age is the minimum age that a person is allowed to Voting, vote in a democracy, democratic process. For General election, general elections around the world, the right to vote is restricted to adults, and most nations use 18 year ...

. Codified youth rights constitute one aspect of how youth are treated in society. Other aspects include social questions of how adults see and treat youth, and how open a society is to youth participation.

Issues

Of primary importance to advocates of youth rights are historical perceptions of young people, considered to be oppressive and informed by paternalism, adultism and ageism in general, as well as fears of

children A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...

and

youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood (Maturity (psychological), maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as bei ...

. Several of these perceptions include the assumption that young people are incapable of making crucial decisions and need protecting from their tendency to act impulsively or irrationally. Such perceptions can inform

laws Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a Socia ...

throughout society, including

, child labor laws, the right to work, curfews, drinking age,

smoking age The smoking age is the minimum legal age required to purchase or use tobacco or cannabis (drug), cannabis products. Most countries have laws that forbid sale of tobacco products to persons younger than certain ages, usually the age of majority. ...

, gambling age,

age of consent The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to Human sexual activity, sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is un ...

, driving age,

emancipation Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure Economic, social and cultural rights, economic and social rights, civil and political rights, po ...

, medical autonomy,

closed adoption Closed adoption (also called "confidential" adoption and sometimes "secret" adoption) is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not re ...

corporal punishment A corporal punishment or a physical punishment is a punishment which is intended to cause physical pain to a person. When it is inflicted on Minor (law), minors, especially in home and school settings, its methods may include spanking or Padd ...

, the

, and military conscription. Restrictions on young people that aren't applied to adults may be called status offenses and viewed as a form of unjustified

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

. There are specific sets of issues addressing the rights of youth in schools, including zero tolerance, " gulag schools", ''

In loco parentis The term ''in loco parentis'', Contemporary Latin, Latin for "in the place of a parent", refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. Originally derived from ...

'', and student rights in general.

Homeschooling Homeschooling or home schooling (American English), also known as home education or elective home education (EHE) (British English), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted ...

unschooling Unschooling is a practice of self-driven informal learning characterized by a lesson-free and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, under th ...

, and

alternative school An alternative school is an educational establishment with a curriculum and methods that are nontraditional. Such schools offer a wide range of philosophies and teaching methods; some have political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, wh ...

s are popular youth rights issues. A long-standing effort within the youth rights movements has focused on

civic engagement Civic engagement or civic participation is any individual or group activity addressing issues of public concern. Civic engagement includes communities working together or individuals working alone in both political and non-political actions to ...

. Other issues include mandatory allowance and non-authoritarian parenting. There have been a number of historical campaigns to increase youth voting rights by lowering the

and the age of candidacy. There are also efforts to get young people elected to prominent positions in local communities, including as members of

city council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, borough counc ...

s and as mayors. For example, in the 2011 Raleigh mayoral election 17-year-old Seth Keel launched a campaign for Mayor despite the age requirement of 21. Strategies for gaining youth rights that are frequently utilized by their advocates include developing youth programs and organizations that promote youth activism, youth participation, youth empowerment, youth voice, youth/adult partnerships, intergenerational equity and civil disobedience between young people and adults.

History

First emerging as a distinct movement in the 1930s, youth rights have long been concerned with

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...

and intergenerational equity. Tracing its roots to youth activists during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, youth rights has influenced the civil rights movement,

opposition to the Vietnam War Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1965 with demonstrations against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War, United States in the war. Over the next several years, these demonstrations grew ...

, and many other movements. Since the advent of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, the youth rights movement has been gaining predominance again.

Fallibility and individual differences

Some youth rights advocates use the argument of fallibility against the belief that others can know what is best or worst for an individual, and criticize the children's rights movement for assuming that exterior legislators, parents, authorities and so on can know what is for a minor's own good. These thinkers argue that the ability to correct what others think about one's own welfare in a falsificationist (as opposed to

postmodernist Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...

) manner constitutes a non-arbitrary mental threshold at which an individual can speak for his or herself independently of exterior assumptions, as opposed to arbitrary chronological minimum ages in legislation. They also criticize the carte blanche for arbitrary definitions of "maturity" implicit in children's rights laws such as "with rising age and maturity" for being part of the problem, and suggest the absolute threshold of conceptual after-correcture to remedy it. These views are often supported by people with experience of the belief in absolutely gradual mental development being abused as an argument for "necessity" of arbitrary distinctions such as

which they perceive as oppressive (either currently oppressing or having formerly oppressed them, depending on age and jurisdiction), and instead cite types of

connectionism Connectionism is an approach to the study of human mental processes and cognition that utilizes mathematical models known as connectionist networks or artificial neural networks. Connectionism has had many "waves" since its beginnings. The first ...

that allows for critical phenomena that encompasses the entire

brain The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

. These thinkers tend to stress that different individuals reach the critical threshold at somewhat different ages with no more than one in 365 (one in 366 in the case of leap years) chance of coinciding with a birthday, and that the relevant difference that it is acceptable to base different treatment on is only between individuals and not between jurisdictions. Generally, the importance of judging each individual by observable relevant behaviors and not by birth date is stressed by advocates of these views.

Youth rights

Children's rights Children's rights or the rights of children are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.

cover all rights belonging to children. When individuals grow up, they are granted new rights (such as voting, consent, and driving) and duties (such as criminal responsibility and draft eligibility). There are different minimum limits of age at which

are, situationally, not independent or deemed legally competent to make certain decisions or take certain actions. Some rights and responsibilities that legally come with age are: *

Voting age A legal voting age is the minimum age that a person is allowed to Voting, vote in a democracy, democratic process. For General election, general elections around the world, the right to vote is restricted to adults, and most nations use 18 year ...

* Age of candidacy *

Age of consent The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to Human sexual activity, sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is un ...

Age of majority The age of majority is the threshold of legal adulthood as recognized or declared in law. It is the moment when a person ceases to be considered a minor (law), minor, and assumes legal control over their person, actions, and decisions, thus te ...

* Age of criminal responsibility * Drinking age * Driving age * Legal working age *

Right to work The right to work is the concept that people have a human right to work, or to engage in productive employment, and should not be prevented from doing so. The right to work, enshrined in the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Ri ...

* Student rights *

Youth suffrage Youth suffrage is the right to vote for young people. It forms part of the broader universal suffrage and youth rights movements. Most democracies have lowered the voting age to between 16 and 18, while some advocates for children's suffrage ho ...

After youth reach these limits they are free to vote, buy or consume alcohol beverages, and drive cars, among other acts.

Movement

The "youth rights movement", also described as "youth liberation", is a nascent grass-roots movement whose aim is to fight against ageism and for the

of young people – those "under the age of majority", which is 18 in most countries. Some groups combat pedophobia and ephebiphobia throughout society by promoting youth voice, youth empowerment and ultimately, intergenerational equity through youth/adult partnerships. Many advocates of youth rights distinguish their movement from the

children's rights Children's rights or the rights of children are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.

movement, which they argue advocates changes that are often restrictive towards children and youth.

Organizations in China

International Youth Rights (IYR) is a student-run youth rights organization in China, with regional chapters across the country and abroad. Its aim is to make voices of youth be heard across the world and give opportunities for youths to carry out their own creative solutions to world issues in real life.

Organizations in Europe

Th
European Youth Forum
(YFJ, from Youth Forum Jeunesse) is the platform of the National Youth Council and International Non-Governmental Youth Organisations in Europe. It strives for youth rights in International Institutions such as the European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations. The European Youth Forum works in the fields of youth policy and youth work development. It focuses its work on European youth policy matters, whilst through engagement on the global level it is enhancing the capacities of its members and promoting global interdependence. In its daily work the European Youth Forum represents the views and opinions of youth organisations in all relevant policy areas and promotes the cross-sectoral nature of youth policy towards a variety of institutional actors. The principles of equality and sustainable development are mainstreamed in the work of the European Youth Forum. Other International youth rights organizations include Article 12 in Scotland and K.R.A.T.Z.A. in Germany. In

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

, the voting age has been lowered to 16 in 2018 to vote in national and European Parliament elections. Th
European Youth Portal
is the starting place for the European Union's youth policy, with Erasmus+ as one of its key initiatives.

Organizations in the United States

The National Youth Rights Association is the primary youth rights organization for the youths in the United States, with local chapters across the country. The organization known as Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions is also an important organization. The Freechild Project has gained a reputation for interjecting youth rights issues into organizations historically focused on youth development and youth service through their consulting and training activities. The Global Youth Action Network engages young people around the world in advocating for youth rights, and Peacefire provides

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

-specific support for youth rights activists. Choose Responsibility and their successor organization, the Amethyst Initiative, founded by John McCardell, Jr., exist to promote the discussion of the drinking age, specifically. Choose Responsibility focuses on promoting a legal drinking age of 18, but includes provisions such as education and licensing. The Amethyst Initiative, a collaboration of college presidents and other educators, focuses on discussion and examination of the drinking age, with specific attention paid to the culture of alcohol as it exists on college campuses and the negative impact of the drinking age on alcohol education and responsible drinking.

Organizations in India

Young India Foundation (YIF) is a youth-led youth rights organization in India, based in Gurgaon with regional chapters across India. Its aim is to make voices of youth be heard across India and seek representation for the 60% of India's demographic that is below the age of 25. YIF is also the organization behind the age of candidacy campaign to bring down the age when a Member of Legislative Assembly or Member of Parliament can contest.

Prominent individuals

Youth rights, as a philosophy and as a movement, has been informed and is led by a variety of individuals and institutions across the United States and around the world. In the 1960s and 70s John Holt, Richard Farson,

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (September 9, 1911 – August 2, 1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the ...

and Neil Postman were regarded authors who spoke out about youth rights throughout society, including education, government, social services and popular citizenship. Shulamith Firestone also wrote about youth rights issues in the second-wave feminist classic '' The Dialectic of Sex''. Alex Koroknay-Palicz has become a vocal youth rights proponent, making regular appearances on television and in newspapers. Mike A. Males is a prominent sociologist and researcher who has published several books regarding the rights of young people across the United States. Robert Epstein is another prominent author who has called for greater rights and responsibilities for youth. Several organizational leaders, including Sarah Fitz-Claridge of Taking Children Seriously, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire and Adam Fletcher (activist) of The Freechild Project conduct local, national, and international outreach for youth and adults regarding youth rights. Giuseppe Porcaro during his mandate as Secretary General of the European Youth Forum edited the second edition of the volume "The International Law of Youth Rights" published by

Brill Publishers Brill Academic Publishers () is a Dutch international academic publisher of books, academic journals, and Bibliographic database, databases founded in 1683, making it one of the oldest publishing houses in the Netherlands. Founded in the South ...

References

{{Youth empowerment