FJ - Forum des Jeunes

The Youth Council of the French-Speaking Community is the official advisory body and voice of the French-speaking young people in Belgium. Its role is to have young people (16-30 years old) participating in the democratic process, especially by collecting their opinion about a variety of themes, that directly or indirectly affect them, to then relieve it to the politics. The Youth Council defends young people’s interests and represents them at national and international level. The main tool the Youth Council has to make young people’s voice heard is the issuing of official notices. Then, we make sure the suggestions made by young people are followed by concrete measures helping improving their life. The Youth Council has certainly no decisional power but it has a real lobbying role to the decision makers in our country. The Youth Council is the young itching powder to the parliament members and ministers. The Youth Council has already obtained various “political victories” to ensure young people’s emancipation in society: the withdrawal of security measures targeting young people (mosquito, curfew, bootcamp, etc.); the limitation of discriminatory measures against young people regarding employment and unemployment; the introduction of lessons about affective and sexual life in school programmes; the integration of programmes of education to the media on the waves of RTBF (Belgian television and radio); etc. The Youth Council works thus on listening to young people’s concerns and on having young people participating in civic life but we also want to build a collective speech to be able to support the voice of young people.