This joint initiative between ISO and Interpeace responds to the UN Youth Office’s call to institutionalise meaningful youth engagement. It aims to set global standards that make youth participation in climate action structured, accountable, and lasting—especially for those most affected by climate-related instability. By combining ISO’s standardisation expertise with Interpeace’s peacebuilding leadership, the initiative translates youth-led climate action into institutional practice that fosters resilience and stability.

Why youth engagement + why standards:

There is broad agreement that youth drive climate mitigation, adaptation, and community resilience—but their participation remains largely voluntary, fragmented, or symbolic. Meanwhile, private actors control most climate finance and implementation levers, yet few shared benchmarks exist for how they include young people in design, decision-making, or evaluation. The gap is not motivation; it is systems: unclear definitions, uneven resourcing, no common indicators, and limited verification.

To fix a systems problem, we need a systems tool. A standards pathway creates a common baseline for who participates, how decisions are shared, what resources flow, and how results are measured. It clarifies roles (institutions, youth, intermediaries), locks in safeguards (do-no-harm, MHPSS, anti-harassment), and sets evidence of conformity so participation withstands leadership changes and market cycles. ISO supplies the architecture for consistency and comparability; Interpeace ensures the content is inclusive, risk-informed, and locally trusted. Together, this moves youth engagement from voluntary and symbolic to structural and durable across public and private climate action.

You can’t manage what you can’t define—let’s define it together.