By : Catalina Dumbraveanu
A quarter of the population in Moldova are young people, aged between 16 and 30 years old. Their rights, usually approached in the general context of human rights system, should be enhanced, in order to ensure the empowerment and development of young people.
The Moldovan Strategy for Youth Sector Development from 2014 to 2020 followed a rights-based approach so that young people with fewer opportunities would be included in the whole set of interventions proposed by the strategy. However, in 2015 the Ministry of Youth and Sports was estimating that only around 6% of youths benefit from state programs.
One of the partners in implementing the strategy is the National Youth Council of Moldova (CNTM). This is the largest platform of youth NGOs, representing the young and advocating for their rights at national and international level. During the last years, it has done more research on the rights of young people and has identified areas of increased vulnerability.
Igor Ciurea, Secretary General of CNTM, elaborates on these vulnerabilities: “The rights of the young are closely linked in a system, we can not talk about full compliance of a right and the denial of others. Under certain conditions, local young people are more vulnerable when it comes to political rights and the right to work.”
These discrepancies arise because of difficult economic grounds that Moldova is facing and also because of the lack of an educational system that truly supports and promotes the development and empowerment of the young in politics.
The paradigm needs to be changed and the capacity and potential of youth should be supported and used today. “The young can come up with solutions and answers to the problems that they face. It should be done by creating a context in the spirit of youth rights development in which every young regardless of demographics has the opportunity to develop and affirm in the society,“ CIurea says.
CNTM is the only youth organization in Moldova that in partnership with the European Youth Forum (YFJ) has submitted a report on the rights of young people in the Universal Periodical Review of the United Nations. Ciurea, who is also one of the members of YFJ expert group on youth rights, comments on the potential of online media in fostering youth rights.
In recent years, increasing quality media sources is noticed enabled the growth of the role of civil society in Moldova. Likewise, any process of asserting the rights of the young starts with education. The role of media is very important, as being able to provide fast, efficient, reliable and targeted information that is understandable,” he says.
“The quality of the media directly reflect the quality of democratic processes in the society at a time of development, which is an indicator of respecting the rights of young people in this space,” Ciurea notes.
How involved are young journalists as partners of civil society?
“More and more investigative journalism products are made by young journalists. The activity of the civil society is only important if it is transparent and opened to wider public debates, its activity comes as reaction and necessity to solve public problems. The collaboration between journalists and civil society can provide that degree of transparency and public pressure on policy makers in order to ensure a government agenda, which corresponds to the real needs of the young,” Ciurea says.
According to the results of 2015 national census of youth media published by Young Journalist Center, more youth-led media creating content for young people exist today such as #diez, a popular news portal for youth created in 2013
“On the Moldovan media market, we were the first to have the youth as our target niche audience,” says Alexandru Lebedev, CEO and founder of #diez.
Reflecting on how the portal became relevant, it all boils down to understanding its audience needs.
“We try to talk to our readers, to crowdsource for information and in the same time to have a social media presence in every social bubble we know users are in. We like to answer questions before the questions appear. We focus on the needs of the user and this way, we stay relevant.”
In spite of existing challenges such as the lack of financial resources and training for editorial teams, most of media covering youth issues in the country stimulate youth engagement, which in turn can spark dialogue with institutions and promoting opportunities for a larger set of the population.
