The Right To Not Participate

October 30th, 2007 by mas | Filed under Participation & Citizenship.

I commented in a discussion a while ago that one of the features of the right for children and young people to participate was also the right to choose not to participate. After I’d said it I wasn’t quite sure if it was actually what I’d meant to say! Then it sounded a bit dumb - so why would people in the youth participation field be interested in young people that choose not to participate?

Lots of reasons probably - like investigating why they don’t want to participate, looking at creative ways to encourage them to change their mind and & so on. But what about respecting their choice simply not to - would this be possible? I know - simple answer - yes & lets move on to the people that do! But then isn’t that one of the biggest criticisms of youth participation - its easy to work with the young people that are already motivated & engaged - what about the ones that aren’t?

I think my original comment was to argue that it shouldn’t be assumed young people have to participate in the expected ways we define - they have the right to opt out of these (or not to opt in in the first place). Having made this choice though maybe they’re already ‘participating’?! I often hear people saying they’re not going to vote - they don’t intend to not vote out of laziness or apathy - they’re making a conscious decision not to vote because they don’t want to support any of the options on offer. Of course the problem with this is that you then can’t measure between these ‘conscious non voters’ and the people who just couldn’t be bothered/weren’t interested.

So maybe this ‘non participation’ is sometimes ‘participating’ but because its not by the rules it doesn’t get acknowledged? If so how does that fit with the current agenda of trying to get as many people to vote as possible (which is the real interest by political parties isn’t it?)

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Viewing 2 Comments

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    Your right not to participate puts no obligation on me not to put forward my opinion that you should participate.

    And if I respect you, then I should be listening to your reasons for not wanting to participate, and should be taking that on board in persuading you to participate, or changing the method of participation offered.
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    or recognising that actually you are participating - just not on my terms! (and then the question is should this then be accepted or should people 'participating' out of the mainstream be encouraged to move towards the mainstream so that their message can have more impact?

    An example of this is people who didn't vote in the last election out of principal of the Iraq war. People that didn't want to vote Conservative or Labour (both war supporting) or Liberal Democrat (maybe not convincing or just not understandable?) and so either didn't vote or voted for the Green Party for example. I would have considered this a 'wasted vote' - there's no point voting for the Green Party because theres no prospect of them having power therefore you're not influencing change - and by the same measure not voting is a wasted vote.

    It would have been very interesting though had there been an option to 'abstain on principle' and to have seen the reasons given. Arguably this would then actually have some power, because if a large number of people cited the same reason, those politicians that want to win these 'non votes' would have some information about what these people want/don't want. (fits the criteria for your 'I should be listening for your reasons for not wanting to participate' Tim). I wonder what would happen if these non votes were the majority though!?

    (Those are not my political views - just an example!)

    This doesn't just have to apply in politics - in the traditional meeting structure there should be an option to abstain during voting. How many young people sitting on forums, councils and committee's are made aware of this? From what I've seen on courses, very few - most people think voting is a simple yes/no process. Typically though abstentions 'don't count' so maybe its not abstentions thats needed - it is some sort of 'principled non participation'.

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