Rise Up, Oh Youth

This article was originally written for the Kathmandu Post. Jagannath Lamichhane is a Youth Action Fund grantee and a global mental health and disability rights activist.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dhulikhel to attend a Youth Action Grantee Meeting called by the Open Society Institute, Youth Action Fund (YAF). Over 30 grantees had attended the meeting, mostly from remote districts of the country. It was primarily a sharing meeting to explore youth issues of this country and how they perceive the social problems in everyday life. The meeting made me thoughtful about pressing but forgotten youth issues which deserve to be brought into national debate.

Nepal has clearly failed to include the imagination of youths in nation building. Political parties have routinely used youth energy for violent street protests, strikes, fighting against each other, rallies and destruction of public property rather than cultivating a culture of democracy, hard work, guardianship for the country and their intellectual growth.

I frequently reflect, "Is there anything to aspire to as a youth in Nepal?" I hardly see couple of points that make me proud to be a youth living in Nepal. Like the millions of young people who compose almost half of the population of this country, I share a common fear of uncertainty, worthless mindset, victims of political instability, the suffering of unemployment, and more sadly, the stigma of a poor country. Because of this dark reality, everyday, nearly one thousand youths flee this country in search of better opportunities, a majority to the Arab countries to labour at risky construction sites. 

Youths in general and genuine issues of youths in particular receive marginal attention in Nepal. I have noted that suicide, substance abuse, disability, unemployment, migration (both abroad and internal) and climate change are major issues of youths which affect them deeply. Such issues have an adverse effect on their mental health. In many cases, such issues are the causes of mental disability conditions and severe poverty among the youth. But these are not the issues debated in the mainstream youth debate because these are the issues of the poor and vulnerable youths. 

If we carefully review the pattern of youth mobilisation in Nepal, a large portion of youth energy is being spent on political battles aimed at fulfilling narrow party interests and political conflicts rather than helping youths to become creative forces for positive social changes. In many cases, political youths become handicapped in the absence of basic skills to live an independent life. In fact, the political leadership is responsible for creating a damaging environment for youths. Because of this, youths are on their way out, threatening our collective stability and future security in an unprecedented way.

Now, a number of questions arise. How do we overcome the prevailing damaging environment? How do we move from poverty to prosperity? How do we create an environment where we can hold our heads high as Nepalis? Like the childish claim of our leaders, there is no overnight magic to solve our problems. I believe that we require thousands of small and honest grassroots initiatives to translate democratic values and human rights principles into people's lives. For this to happen, youths and their creative energies should be placed at the centre. This is the only "idea" that can find the ways to bring sustainable social transformation. So, for this country, it is vitally important to identify creative ideas of youths and provide committed support to institutionalise them.

Addressing the YAF grantee meeting, its New York-based director Noel Selegzi said, "We are seeking innovative ideas of youths. We encourage Nepali youths to surprise us with their noble ideas where we can support them to translate their idea into action." This is the most welcome initiation of the Open Society Institute solely targeted at promoting the ideas of youths. We cannot expect that YAF will solve all the problems of youths in this country. But in terms of educating our government bodies, international agencies working in Nepal, the Ministry of Youth and Sports and in creating youth role models at the community level, YAF has taken a step to institutionalise the needs of youths in the national advocacy debate. YAF is the single most flexible resource available in the country dedicated to youths (www.soros.org/initiatives/youth/focus/action/grants/nepal), where youths directly can create national pressure on diverse issues for policy changes and social practice. 

YAF coordinator for Nepal Prem Darshan Sapkota encourages youths to develop practical ideas that use the existing community resources and focus on education, access to technology, advocacy and the media. Sapkota emphasises that YAF gives priority to issues that take action steps which go beyond just holding training and meetings.

It is my hope that YAF will recognise the complexity of youths living with mental and physical disability conditions. Therefore, I personally appeal to youths who are living with mental or physical disabilities, to gather courage to break the stigma of living in a disadvantaged human condition, come out from isolation, write proposals to YAF and embrace this opportunity to inform the world about the experience of living in social segregation, negligence and inhuman social treatment that still exist in the 21st century. With the support of a small fund, take this opportunity to become the advocate of our cause by ourselves. Wake up, youths, this is the time to act.