For decades, youth inclusion at international summits could be reduced to a familiar image: a young delegate smiling behind a nameplate in a side room while older leaders made the decisions in the main hall.
At the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 81) in New York, that image began to look increasingly inadequate.
Young leaders did not simply ask for a seat at the table. They stepped into spaces where global priorities were being debated, took the microphone, challenged institutions and demanded something deeper than representation: real decision-making power.
The message was clear: inclusion cannot end with an invitation to speak. If young people are expected to live with the consequences of global decisions, they must have a meaningful role in shaping those decisions.
For years, international summits have featured youth panels, colourful forums and inspiring opening statements delivered by young people to rooms of senior dignitaries. These platforms can create valuable opportunities for dialogue. But they can also become exercises in symbolic participation when young people are invited to share their experiences and ideas, only to disappear when the negotiations over budgets, policies and commitments begin.
UNGA 81 exposed that contradiction.
From Audience to Architects
The shift was visible across the programme.
While governments debated trust, development, peace, technology and the future of the global economy, young people were increasingly present in conversations about how those systems should work.
Liberia, for example, placed youth, peace and security at the centre of its UNGA 81 agenda. Its “Rooting and Rising” event focused on investing in Liberia’s PATHWAYs reform vision and positioning young Liberians as stakeholders in the country’s peace and development agenda—not merely as beneficiaries of it.
That distinction matters.
Young people are too often described as the leaders of tomorrow. But tomorrow is being shaped by decisions made today—on climate change, artificial intelligence, employment, migration, peace and security, education and access to capital.
The question, therefore, is not whether young people are ready for leadership. In many communities, they are already leading.
They are organising grassroots movements, building businesses, developing digital solutions, creating new forms of civic engagement and working across borders to respond to crises. The challenge is that the institutions governing these issues have not always evolved at the same pace.
The demographic contradiction is difficult to ignore: young people make up a huge share of the world’s population, yet political and institutional decision-making remains overwhelmingly concentrated among older generations.
This is not simply a question of fairness. It is a question of whether global governance can adequately understand and respond to the realities of the generation that will inherit its consequences.
Mental Health Is a Governance Issue
The conversation around youth mental health at UNGA 81 offered another example of this changing approach.
On September 23, the United Nations Youth Office and the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health launched a report highlighting the pressures facing more than 2.6 billion people aged 15–35, including economic insecurity, climate change, armed conflict, inequality and rapid technological change.
The significance was not simply the size of the number.
The report challenged the tendency to treat youth mental health solely as an individual medical problem. Instead, it called attention to the wider systems in which young people live—including education, decent work, housing, peace and security, digital environments, climate and community life.
That is a governance conversation.
When a generation faces unemployment, conflict, displacement, climate anxiety and rapid technological disruption, asking young people merely to become more resilient misses the larger question: what are institutions doing to create conditions in which young people can actually thrive?
Skills, Technology and the Future of Work
The same shift was evident in discussions around skills and technology.
On September 21, SAP, World Scouting and the World Scout Foundation convened the fifth dialogue on youth skills for sustainable development on the margins of UNGA 81. The discussions focused on digital innovation and AI readiness, green skills, creative industries, leadership, civic skills and volunteering.
These are not peripheral youth issues.
They are central to the future of work and to the competitiveness of nations.
Young people are not simply asking governments to create jobs for them. Increasingly, they are asking governments, businesses and international institutions to create systems that allow them to participate in emerging economies, access capital, build enterprises and compete in global markets.
Nigeria’s “Hire From Nigeria” initiative offered a particularly clear example.
At a UNGA 81 side event on September 24, Nigerian officials and private-sector leaders promoted impact sourcing as a driver of global trade and inclusive job creation, positioning Nigerian talent and technology-enabled services as part of the global economy.
The message was different from the traditional development narrative.
It was not simply: help us.
It was: hire us, invest in us, partner with us and give us access to global markets.
That distinction represents an important evolution in how young Africans are presenting themselves to the world.
From Khartoum to New York
From Khartoum to New York, the lesson of UNGA 81 is deeply personal for my generation.
We do not migrate, code, organise, build businesses or advocate for change because someone gave us a seat at the table.
We do it because our circumstances demand it—and because we increasingly understand that the decisions being made in distant institutions will determine the opportunities available to us at home.
For young people across the Afro-Arab space, “beyond the seat at the table” is more than a slogan. It is a demand for meaningful participation in the systems that shape our lives.
We do not want to be invited to speak about unemployment while others determine economic policy.
We do not want to discuss climate change while others decide where resources are invested.
We do not want to speak about war and peace while others determine security priorities.
We want a meaningful role in the budget, the vote and the pen that writes the resolution.
This does not mean replacing experience with youth. It means recognising that effective leadership can be intergenerational—and that young people should not have to wait decades before they are trusted with meaningful responsibility.
UNGA 81 showed that young leaders are already moving from the audience to the architecture of global policymaking.
The challenge now is whether institutions will move with them.
Because the question for UNGA 82 should no longer be whether young people deserve a seat at the table.
The question is whether the system is prepared to share the table—and the power that comes with it.
The author works with the Afro-Arab Youth Council (AAYC)
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