Acts constructing (r)evolution(aries): how resistance practices connect the emergence of youth and the future of the international human rights

With the adoption of the OHCHR Management plan 2018-2021 young people became recognised for the first time as drivers and promoters of change, spotlighted as a key (social) group of the population, and positioned by a key United Nations human rights institution right along with women and persons with disabilities, has been marked as the emergence of youth within international human rights regime. The process of rapid transitioning of young people from objects of in need protection to subjects (of rights) equipped with agency and recognition of young people as key affected social groups and drivers of change, however, is puzzling. Especially so, when one considers that the timely positioning of young people on the agenda of the international human rights regime is happening right during the latest period of increasing criticism and attacks on human rights institutions and norms. While the scholars observing the rise of youth within transnational governance, might here quickly point out the constructing processes of youth as an identity and social category that primarily aims to draw young people into global development as subjects of neoliberalism. Such an approach seems ignorant of the innovative online and offline practices of young people. Practices, which have, as observed critical scholars of human rights, led to ‘emergences’ of women, persons with disabilities or indigenous peoples as collective subjects of rights within the modern international human rights system. Struggles caused by continuous subjectification, exclusion, and discrimination, marked by lengthy struggles for recognition, which made visible the inadequacy of existent protection mechanisms largely based on the idea of individual rights, influenced the formation of specific collective rights and helped speed up their inclusion in national and international political agendas. Turning empirically to look at the first Intersessional Seminar on Youth and Human Rights, which took place on 22 September 2016 during the 33rd session of the UN Human Rights Council, a new participatory process introduced during the last reform of the human rights system to make the human rights system more inclusive, transparent, and participatory. This paper aims to trace discursive and representative claims and practices, which are understood as key parts of aesthetic and political practices following feminist and poststructuralist approaches, at play at the seminar by young invited participants to conceptualize and study what practices influenced growing representations of young people in human rights regime. Focusing specifically on practices include picturing their envisioned future and connecting future representations to positions of actors within the human rights system.