Transnational youth networks: an evolving form of public diplomacy to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

According to the United Nations (UN), 41% of the world’s population is under the age of 24 (United Nations Population Division). Despite being a considerably large group, the youth has been commonly underrepresented in decision-making in the public and private sectors. To combat this situation, the UN launched the Youth 2030 strategy in 2018 thereby recognizing the need to empower the youth to reach their full potential (Youth 2030: The UN Youth Strategy). In this contribution, we provide a brief description of some of the recent transnational youth networks (TYNs) and their features in order to discuss the role of such networks to empower the youth. We propose here that such networks constitute a novel and powerful form of public diplomacy (PD) because of their experiential educational aspects that they develop in their members. Moreover, these networks also offer a rather unique opportunity of building interpersonal relationships among global prominent individuals thereby influencing the international agenda. We further discuss how such networks can advance substantially the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda (Sustainable Development Goals).