Arctic Youth High on the Agenda during Norwegian Chairship meeting with Indigenous Permanent Participant Organizations

In addition to updates from the Norwegian Chairship program implementation and Permanent Participants’ activities, youth engagement and Permanent Participant involvement in Working Groups were on the meeting agenda. Arctic youth and Arctic Indigenous Peoples are cross-cutting priorities of the Norwegian Chairship of the Arctic Council 2023-2025.

Each Permanent Participant was invited to include one youth representative as part of their meeting delegation. In tandem with the meeting, the youth representatives held a Permanent Participants Youth Breakout Session jointly organized by the Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat and the Arctic Council Secretariat. The break-out session gathered the nominated youth representatives to discuss potential future activities of the Permanent Participant Youth Network, paving the way to further youth engagement in the Arctic Council and to provide input for initial planning of the Arctic Youth Conference 2025 by the Norwegian Chairship of the Arctic Council.

During its Chairship, Norway aims to strengthen cooperation with the Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and stresses the importance of the participation of Indigenous Peoples and their valuable contributions in all areas of cooperation under the Council. To this end, a discussion was held on how to further enable Permanent Participants’ involvement in Working Group project design and research question development, and to support their active participation in projects.

The meeting ended with a summary of the Permanent Participant Youth Breakout Session provided by the Arctic youth representatives and recommendations for the way forward in strengthening youth engagement in the Arctic Council.