EVERY year on 12 August, International Youth Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of young people to global progress. The 2025 theme, ‘youth advancing multilateral cooperation through technology and partnerships’, is more than aspirational. It reflects a reality already taking shape. From climate action to digital governance, public health to conflict mediation, young people are entering arenas once dominated by seasoned diplomats and technical experts. Technology and strategic alliances are their primary tools, enabling them to connect across borders, demand accountability and create alternative channels of diplomacy. If this momentum is to endure, multilateral institutions must do more than applaud from the sidelines; they must embed youth-led initiatives into formal systems and give them the means to grow.
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New role for youth
TRADITIONALLY, multilateral cooperation has been the preserve of states negotiating through formal bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, or the World Health Organisation. Yet the 21st century’s interconnected, decentralised environment has opened space for new actors. Youth networks are forming across continents, bypassing traditional gatekeepers and forging their own diplomatic channels. Young climate negotiators from small island states use social media to mobilise global support. In Africa, youth-led technology hubs are building open data platforms that governments now rely on for cross-border health surveillance.
This shift is not marginal. Young people account for nearly half of the global population and their perspectives, shaped by lived experience and digital fluency, can reshape policy agendas. When youth contribute strategically, especially via technology-enabled platforms, they can bridge representation gaps, amplify marginalised voices, and bring urgency and innovation to multilateral priorities.
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Technology as driver
DIGITAL tools have become central to this transformation. Youth-led advocacy platforms such as Youth Climate Lab, the Open Government Partnership Youth Caucus, and the Youth Sounding Board at climate summits enable activists from Dhaka to Nairobi to São Paulo to coordinate strategies, share resources, and hold governments to account. The Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI), for example, has seen youth teams in flood-prone communities co-create maps using open-source Geographic Information System tools. By sharing these maps with regional weather bodies, they have strengthened cross-border early warning systems and protected vulnerable populations.
Digital diplomacy, once the preserve of foreign ministries, is increasingly being practised by youth delegations from countries including Bangladesh, Ukraine and Brazil. Virtual ‘embassies’ and online youth parliaments participate in UN forums through livestreamed events, coordinated hashtag campaigns and digital petitions. This approach broadens participation while reducing the costs and logistical barriers that have historically excluded smaller or less wealthy nations.
Youth-led technological solutions have also proven critical during health emergencies. From the Covid-19 pandemic to regional disease outbreaks, hackathons organised by youth groups in the Mekong, the Horn of Africa and the Caribbean have produced apps for vaccine tracking, volunteer mobilisation, and diaspora-driven medical procurement. Several of these tools have been adopted by regional health authorities, illustrating how youth innovation can serve multilateral objectives in real time.
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Youth footprint
PARTNERSHIPS — whether with governments, international organisations, or the private sector — are multiplying the impact of youth innovation. Youth–government collaborations have delivered tangible results: in Tanzania, youth-led civic tech groups worked with the Ministry of Water to build an SMS-based feedback system for rural water access. Supported by UNICEF and UNESCO under the UN Development Assistance Framework, the model has since been shared at East African Community forums, demonstrating its potential for regional adoption.
Cross-sector alliances are also taking shape. The Global Youth Partnership for SDG Digital Action links organisations such as Oxfam, UNDP and Plan International with youth groups in Bangladesh, Nepal and Rwanda. Together, they organise mentorship programmes, open data training, and regional dialogues on digital governance, ensuring that youth-led projects are integrated into broader development strategies rather than siloed as one-off initiatives.
The corporate sector is increasingly involved. In Bangladesh, the SheTech Initiative, launched by a leading telecom provider and youth entrepreneurs, developed an AI-based app to connect Rohingya refugee youth with training and funding opportunities. The platform has been adopted by UN agencies and local NGOs as a model for crisis response, showing how private–youth partnerships can generate scalable solutions for complex humanitarian challenges.
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Impact in action
THE Mekong Youth Flood Resilience Hub, co-created in 2023 by youth groups from Cambodia, Thailand, and Bangladesh, aggregates hydrological data, rainfall forecasts, and citizen-reported flood levels into a regional dashboard. Integrated into the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s early warning system and used by the Mekong River Commission, it remains youth-managed with UNESCO and government support.
At successive COP summits, youth delegations have built ‘Youth Sounding Boards’ — digital tools gathering feedback from youth participants in real time. The resulting statements, submitted directly to the UNFCCC, have influenced official side events and national delegation positions. At COP28, youth from the Global South successfully advocated for the creation of a Loss and Damage Youth Platform, demonstrating that technology can give youth direct leverage in multilateral negotiations.
In Central America, youth innovators from Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua co-developed a mobile app for cross-border disease surveillance during dengue outbreaks. Funded by PAHO/WHO and supported by youth-led health start-ups, the model has since been adapted for use in Bangladesh and other Asian countries, illustrating the global portability of youth-driven solutions.
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Challenges
Despite such successes, systemic barriers remain. Youth are too often treated as observers rather than decision-makers, their contributions filtered through established institutions before they are heard. Without formal channels for integrating their ideas, even well-designed youth initiatives risk being marginalised.
The digital divide is another critical obstacle. While urban youth may have access to high-speed internet, modern devices and innovation hubs, their rural, indigenous, or displaced peers often face severe digital exclusion. This imbalance narrows participation and reinforces global inequities, leaving many unable to contribute to or benefit from digital cooperation.
Funding is a further constraint. Many youth-led projects begin with high energy and strong ideas but falter after initial grant periods or hackathon prizes expire. Without sustained financial backing and policy integration, such initiatives struggle to scale or institutionalise their work.
Questions of governance and accountability also loom large. Who owns the data generated by these platforms? Who ensures transparency and ethical compliance? Without clear structures, youth innovators risk exploitation, co-option, or surveillance, particularly in politically sensitive contexts.
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Strengthening youth impact
FOR multilateral systems to remain relevant, they must move beyond symbolic gestures towards structural inclusion. This means establishing formal youth advisory councils with decision-making authority, particularly on pressing issues such as climate policy, digital rights and humanitarian innovation. Such councils must be inclusive by design, drawing in youth technologists, civic data specialists, social entrepreneurs and community organisers.
Sustained resources are essential. Donors and intergovernmental agencies should commit to multi-year funding windows, focusing on models with potential for regional replication—flood dashboards, civic feedback tools and digital inclusion hubs among them. Addressing the digital divide must be treated as a matter of justice, not just infrastructure, with targeted investments in connectivity, hardware and training for marginalised youth.
Strong ethical frameworks are equally vital. Clear policies on data protection, privacy and algorithmic transparency should be embedded in youth-led projects from inception, ensuring that innovations serve communities without compromising their rights.
To strengthen cooperation across borders, regional hubs and mentorship networks could act as incubators for youth-led solutions. These would provide space for peer-to-peer learning, technical mentorship and the exchange of tested approaches, creating the network effects that amplify youth influence in global policy spaces.
The 2025 International Youth Day theme recognises that youth-led, tech-enabled partnerships are already shaping the multilateral systems of the future. Flood resilience dashboards, digital democracy platforms, health surveillance tools — these are not experimental add-ons but integral components of tomorrow’s governance architecture.
To neglect them would be to squander one of the most dynamic resources available to global cooperation. The challenge now is to integrate youth-led initiatives into formal decision-making, provide them with long-term resources and protect the integrity of their work.
If technology and partnerships are the hardware of cooperation, youth ingenuity is the software. Together, they can rewrite the rules of how the world collaborates — making it faster, more inclusive, and more attuned to the challenges ahead. On this International Youth Day, the task is not merely to celebrate youth potential, but to activate their partnership power in building a just, resilient and connected future.
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Musharraf Tansen is a development analyst and former country representative of Malala Fund.
