PRISMA Contributes to UN Consultation on Gen Z Activism and the Future of Civic Space
26-05-2026
The contribution draws on PRISMA’s practical experience working on digital citizenship, youth participation, democratic engagement, and transnational civic cooperation across Europe. In particular, it reflects observations emerging from initiatives such as the European Digital Citizenship Week (EDCW), and the broader activities developed under the PRISMA Framework focused on strengthening democratic resilience and digital civic participation.
The UN consultation aims to examine how young people organize, mobilize, and exercise their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in a rapidly changing civic and digital environment. It also seeks to identify the growing challenges affecting youth activism globally, including shrinking civic space, digital harassment, participation fatigue, criminalization of dissent, and barriers to meaningful democratic participation.
In its submission, PRISMA emphasizes that youth civic participation is increasingly:
- digital-first and transnational;
- decentralized and community-driven;
- based on flexible participation ecosystems rather than traditional hierarchical structures.
The contribution highlights how initiatives such as the European Digital Citizenship Week demonstrate the emergence of collaborative civic engagement models where organizations, educators, youth workers, and young people co-create participation spaces through hybrid online and offline formats. At the same time, the submission warns that many current democratic participation frameworks and funding systems still struggle to recognize and support these newer forms of civic engagement.
Another key message of the contribution is that shrinking civic space should not be understood only through formal restrictions on protests or associations. Increasingly, young activists face:
- online harassment and delegitimization;
- disinformation attacks;
- algorithmic invisibility of civic content;
- burnout linked to constant digital visibility;
- symbolic participation mechanisms with limited decision-making power.
The submission also underlines the role that transnational civil society cooperation plays in protecting democratic participation. Through the PRISMA European Network, member organizations contribute to building safer civic ecosystems, peer-learning structures, dissemination networks, and cross-border solidarity mechanisms that strengthen democratic resilience and support youth-led participation.
This contribution is also connected to the objectives of the PRISMA Framework, which seeks to strengthen digital citizenship, democratic participation, media literacy, and civic engagement capacities across Europe. Through this work, PRISMA aims to support more inclusive, participatory, and resilient democratic ecosystems capable of responding to emerging societal and technological challenges.
As debates around democracy, digital governance, and civic freedoms continue to evolve globally, PRISMA remains committed to ensuring that youth perspectives and civil society experiences contribute meaningfully to international policy discussions.
Find out here more information about the consultation.