is one of the general principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), together with the right to non-discrimination, the right to life and development, and giving consideration to the child’s best interest.2 Participation is enshrined in several provisions of the CRC, where it is considered as “an underlying value that needs to guide the way each individual right is ensured and respected, a criterion to assess progress in the implementation process of children’s rights”.3 In this article the focus is on the right to participation when it involves children and youth’s civil and political engagement in public decision-making settings. According to Kofi Annan (2002), the evolution of these forms of children’s participation in public affairs are “citizen engagement” through deliberative and representational procedures that contribute to building spaces of democratic coexistence together with adults, and “political engagement”, which is the “group of actions that children and youth perform in an organized fashion to achieve political goals, thus exerting influence on the decision-making processes that affect them”.4 The variety of methodologies and tools that aim at realizing child and youth citizen and political participation can be classified into different levels of effectiveness according to how meaningful and consequential they are. These levels have been classified by Roger Hart into the eight levels of “the ladder of participation”, from models of “non-participation” 2 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC., General comment No. 12 (2009): The right of the child to be heard. 20 July 2009, CRC/C/GC/12. P. 5. 3 The right to participation are defined on art. 12 (Respect for the views of the child), art. 13 (Freedom of expression), art. 14 (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion) art. 15 (Freedom of association), art. 17 (Access to information and mass media) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and on the General comment No. 12 of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2009) on The right of the child to be heard. 4 Kofi Annan (UN General Assembly’s Special Session on Children in May 2002), cited in: Gutiérrez Herazo, A. (2013). La participación de niños, niñas y adolescentes en espacios de incidencia regional. Documento de trabajo. INN, REDLAMYC, Save the Children. P. 15.
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