by Anna Roberts, FAUSA
March 2026
I am a classroom history teacher. Many of my students see the world around them and do not see avenues for their voices. I took this opportunity at CSW70 to look into how children can engage in discourse, exercise their agency and enact justice in their own communities.
One session that spoke to this focus was “Educate Her, and You Shake the System.” This panel highlighted ways in which youth asserted their right to educational justice and equity, and how civil society can help in continuing to break these barriers. We started with where justice is taught— the classroom. The people responsible for instruction are teachers. In order to teach with a lens of justice, we must first instruct teachers in how to do so.
From there, panelists discussed justice along each milestone of the educational journey—middle school, high school and college. NextMUN is creating interest in global cooperation early, high schoolers are engaging in cancer research by leveraging digital tools that democratize research, and colleges are reshaping the way future generations will plan their endeavors at enacting justice.
Though panelists came from different nations, industries and lifeways, there were striking commonalities:
- Tokenism is no longer a valid form of currency in governance: youth input is necessary and valuable. Though efforts at youth representation have been made, the input given is not seen in outcomes or initiatives. Youth don’t want to be paraded around, we want a seat at the table.
- Funding is key in a backsliding world: the work must continue in spite of decisions made by member states. Individuals are willing to join the fight for gender equality, but that very engagement is only possible with organizational infrastructure to support and direct the work.
I had hoped I would see the faces of my students reflected in the stories shared at CSW—I did not expect to see them in concrete programmatic solutions for justice. CSW70 saw the passage of the Core Principles for Meaningful Youth Participation. This framework is a promise that once students are ready, their voices have a place where they can be heard.
Before I left for New York, a student asked, “Why do you want to go to CSW?” We had just finished covering Seneca Falls and the Declaration on the Rights of Women. Many of my students thought the time for conventions on these rights had passed. One said, “They did the work… and we still have to do the work?”
If we don’t go and learn—what progress has been made, what solutions fall short—we deprive ourselves of that opportunity to learn, to try again, to connect with others, and to gain a more comprehensive context in which to situate our understanding of the world and our place in it.