Youth engagement in local governance: An analysis of Youths’ role in Godawari Municipality of Lalitpur Nepal

Abstract

Youth engagement in the local governance is a process of empowering youth for creating spaces to influence the policy making and implementation process in the local government level. It is the way to improve institutional structure and decision-making processes and making the system capable, organized and participatory. Since, the local government has received the mandate from the Constitution of Nepal 2015 to work as independent body to address the issues and concern related to the people on the territory of the respective government, the government has to create the favorable environment for bringing youth into the mainstream. Youth in Nepal constitute 40.33% of the total population size and youth themselves are mobilized to create important role into the political process. Mostly for the political gains, youth are mobilized however, the spaces are not adequately created for their empowerment and making contribution on the human development. The institutional discourse related to youth engagement was started only after 2008 after the establishment of Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS). The broader purpose of establishing the ministry was to contribute on economic and social transformation by systematically addressing the issues of youth concern. Following to the establishment of ministry, the National Youth Policy was introduced in 2009 (amended in 2015), National Youth Council Act 2009 was issued as a base to establish the National Youth Council to overarch all the work related to youth development in the country. Further, National Youth Council has issued the strategic roadmap namely Youth Vision 2025 in the year 2015 to mainstream youth development work in the country. Out of its’ five major strategic directions, mobilization, participation and leadership development is considered as one of the important pillars for youth development. This research assesses the existing policy and programmes related to the youth engagement in local governance targeting the local government. In course of research, the detailed policy analysis related to youth of relevant ministries and government departments has been conducted. After the establishment of the separate ministry, MoYS, mainstreaming youth into the development has been more institutionalized though, there were different programmes from different ministries in place prior to the establishment of ministry. Even after the establishment of MoYS, different ministries are running youth programmes and there is a gap to have coordination between the v

different ministries. MoYS and the National Youth Council bring policies and programmes for mainstreaming youth into the local governance process, but there is a gap in translating these policies into the local level and not ample initiatives have been taken for that. The research assesses the situation of local government and explores whether the policies are translated in practice or not in the local level. The researcher has chosen Godawari municipality as its research site and conducted the review of existing policies, programme documents and also carried out interviews with key policy makers including Mayor and Ward Chairs. Further, to validate the information and also the assess the view of youth, focus group discussions were conducted with the selected youth from the municipality. In the course of research, it has been identified that, Godawari municipality is not progressing on mainstreaming youth engagement into the governance process. Municipality is conducting youth development programmes and most of them are in sports. There are few youth clubs in the communities established by the youth themselves but the municipality is not promoting the formation of youth clubs at the community level. During the interviews, municipality officials highlighted about the participatory planning process but not adequately engaged youth in those process. The study concludes that, the discourse of youth engagement in the governance process should be further mainstreamed and institutionalized at the local government level as it has been envisaged from the policy framework. In Godawari municipality also, though the political leadership has interest to mainstream youth issues, they do lack in establishing structures and system for that. Due to the less focus given by the municipality and lack of transparency into the process of municipality, youth are unable to create trust and have not shown their interest to engage; however, they are interested to engage and contribute to the development process of their communities.