Figure. Working Group "Participation of Youth in Decision Making", facilitator Shkëmb Shala 1 FIRST WORKING GROUP “PARTICIPATION OF YOUTH IN DECISION-MAKING” Problems and challenges Total Negligence The key problem was the total negligence against youth by thedecision-makers. The main concern raised,was the negligence against youth,allegedly due to their lack of experience. Prevention from Experience But this is a paradox: On the one side from youth it is expected to have knowledge and experience, but on the other hand an access into the decision-making processes always has been denied. How can they get experience without practicing? Youth Representatives not always represent Youth Another impeding factor is the clientelistic attitude of many of their representatives. Many youngsters feel that the youth representatives do not represent them in a proper way and that they reflect a“bad model” of the older politicians. This means that they are very active during elections campaigns in lobbying for the youth, but immediately after they are assigned to job positions, then they in a way get “comfortable” and serve in the interest of the ruling hierarchy. No way for democratic controlling of youth representatives Also it was identified that there is lack of proper mechanisms which would enable youngsters to exercise pressure against this kind of representatives. And theirmanipulation with the interests of the youth continues without any control, responsibility or accountability. Wrong youth-event-structures It was considered that there is a lack of effectiveevents for presenting the problems and requests of youth. Even when such events take place the information about them is not widely spread. This especially is very obvious among the youth living in less developed urban or in rural areas. A negative factor is the lack of organization networks for better information and inclusion in decision­making. Youth laws on paper – but not in reality Youth representation is well­regulated in the existing legislation in Kosovo, but the working groups have raised their concerns over the implementation of this legislation. Indeed the youth is invited to show their presence in the media, along with women and marginalized communities. But they are never invited to participate in the working groups to develop youth policies. Bureaucracy as a main and demotivationg obstacle The existence of“excessive bureaucracy” and of the official channels for raising of issues are too complicated for an average young person and this demotivates one to become an active stake-holder in decision­making. Disregards lead to spiral downward of self-initiatives This disregard of the youth in the decision-making processes has led to the loss of trust in their power. This has caused a downward for their self­initiative and for the engagement in solving their own problems. This becomes even more difficult due to the fact that the presence of youth in the media is limited only to calendar days dedicated to youth. Words and papers but too few finances for youth Another problem that was identified are the finances. Funds are mainly concentrated in the capital and less in other urban areas and least in rural areas. 11