Children's rights and the youth perspective in times of crisis are rare and underrepresented in the existing toolkits and recommendations of local municipalities. However, inspiration can be found in the global work on disaster risk reduction.
Space: Children and youth can safely explore and express their views before and after a hazardous event. For children and youth from marginalised groups, creating an enabling environment may require legislation and policies for inclusion, or a focus on shifting inequitable power that could limit spaces in which they could safely share their unique views.
Voice: Children and youth have the skills, capacities and self-confidence to express their views in all stages of disaster risk reduction. Strengthening their voice includes an active focus on addressing issues of poverty, discriminatory cultural norms or other factors that can limit participation.
Audience: Children and youth are heard, and their perspectives valued in assessing, mitigating, preparing for and responding to hazards. This includes having sustainable mechanisms and opportunities in place for children and youth to participate in disaster risk reduction strategic plans from the local to global level.
Influence: Children's rights and youth perspectives are not only heard, but they are also acted upon in risk reduction and are incorporated into resilience policies, programmes and standards that affect their lives, as well as the lives of society at large.
UNDRR has also identified several red flags in the process of engagement with children and youth
• Children and youth have little or no opportunity to express their views.
• Children’s views are manipulated or coerced due to inequitable power dynamics.
• Adults tell young persons what to say or do in a tokenistic or directive process.
• Children and youth express their views, but they are not heard, valued or acted upon.
• The engagement is adult-led and managed and does not give children or youth the opportunity to control both the process and its outcomes; the needs and capabilities of children and youth are ignored.
• Engagement is initiated by adults without any clearly formulated benefit for children and youth as a constituency.
• Adults acknowledge the added value of child and youth perspectives, knowledge and experience can contribute, but the engagement does not acknowledge children and youth as contributors and hence the “looping-back” mechanism is absent.