ABSTRACT
Since the mid 1990s, children’s participation has become increasingly popular among child rights and child development agencies. Children are being involved in research, assessments, monitoring and consultations. They work as peer educators, health promoters and young journalists. In many countries, children’s clubs, parliaments and youth councils have been formed, and in some cases children have been able to influence public decisions and resource allocations. Despite these investments in children’s participation, most children still do not participate in important decisions affecting them. Schools and education are rarely participatory, government decisions are made without children’s inputs, and the media continue to broadcast images of children as helpless victims or of adolescents as trouble makers, rather than of children as active contributors to the development of their communities.
