What should the new Ukrainian youth policy look like?

Numerous discussions on the country's post-war recovery are currently underway at various state levels, among the international and academic communities, as well as representatives of civil society institutions. Communities and regional centers are developing their own recovery and development plans at the local and regional levels. The government, in turn, has announced that it is working on several strategies, some of which are related not only to recovery issues but also to the introduction of qualitatively new areas of public policy or their complete restart. This summer, we will once again witness loud statements and new plans at the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference that is to be held in Berlin. Over the past year, almost all of Ukraine's international partners have been proposing a new vision of its recovery and increasingly calling for this process to be conducted through the prism of human capital development. Unfortunately, these ideas do not sufficiently emphasize the fundamental part of the population – the youth.

Youth policy has a powerful cross-sectoral impact on the future of the state. This is especially noticeable in the areas of demography, economic development of cities and towns, innovation, and the further advancement of the country and the nation as a whole. In 2021, the new Law of Ukraine, "On the Fundamentals of Youth Policy," was adopted, and the National Youth Strategy 2030 was approved. The latter is based on four key priorities: safety, health, capacity, and integration. It is important to note that after the start of the full-scale invasion, the strategy has not lost its relevance due to the flexible selection of priorities that play an essential role in any country's environment. This is especially true regarding the first aspect – security, as it is not only about creating safe physical conditions for young people to live in but also about increasing resilience overall.

The population of Ukraine is declining sharply due to the war, which entails a number of economic, socio-political, and other factors. According to the Institute of Demography and Social Studies, every Ukrainian woman should give birth to more than two children to achieve a zero demographic balance in Ukraine.

At the same time, the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine notes that 4.5 million people will need to be additionally employed for economic recovery.

Around 2 million young people have left Ukraine because of the full-scale invasion, but at the same time, 76% of them are willing to return home after the war is over (according to a CEDOS study).

This leads to the key question: how do we secure this number?

In recent years, we can see that government programs for young people have been aimed mostly at active representatives of this social category and have omitted the "ordinary young person." Programs for developing youth centers and youth councils, as well as the approval of the "youth worker" position, do not cover even a third of young people. An average young person is unlikely to know that Ukraine has national, regional, or local youth councils, the Ministry of Youth and Sports or regional departments, or any other institutions, NGOs, etc. that are responsible for youth issues. Youth policy needs to be reconsidered, which is reflected in the following tasks for the coming years:

• How do we bring back young people who left because of the war?
• How do we integrate young people from the de-occupied territories?
• How do we encourage youth development economically?
• How do we integrate young veterans into society?
• How do we get the youth that is motivated to defend the country?

Let's look at the latter question in more detail. For 2024, Russia has allocated more than 45 billion rubles for "patriotic education" of youth and adolescents. We believe that the majority of these funds, namely 17 billion, will be used to develop youth military formations such as the Unarmy and the First Movement, which is equivalent to training the next generation of military personnel. At the same time, the Ukrainian budget allocates 94 million UAH for implementing state youth policy and strengthening Ukrainian national and civic identity.

We need to consider young people in the temporarily occupied territories separately. It is essential to develop scenarios of how we plan to return them “mentally”. How can we restore the identity of these young people and reintegrate them into society painlessly?

That is why we need to rethink our youth policy. Youth policy is a policy of inevitable change that shapes society for years to come. It can also be called a new "policy of youth" of the country, where the whole state will perceive itself as young and ready for its renewal. It is already crucial to include the youth aspect in all components of public policy. A separate aspect that would stimulate the further process of restoring and developing youth policy could be an invitation from the Ukrainian government to one of the partner states to join or become a key donor responsible for further steps in this area (an example is how Denmark took responsibility for the restoration of Mykolaiv).

Civil society, in cooperation with the state, should develop plans for the return of young people both from abroad and from the occupation. They also must carefully consider how young defenders can get a chance for reintegration and a "new life" in society, as well as develop a plan on how we will encourage young families and how state housing programs for young people should function. Lastly, how we will prevent the brain drain, engage young people in the economy, and give them a chance to create or restore their own businesses.

This article is an appeal to the state to rethink the following aspect of the policy and not limit it to two or three programs that do not take into account the interests of a wide range of young people. We see this policy as a chance to create a new state strategy for years to come, where every Ukrainian has a vision of getting housing, starting a business, getting a quality education, and defending the country.

Read this article in Ukrainian and russian.