Youth and political participation were at the centre of a round table organised in Essaouira, at the initiative of local civil society actors. This meeting, held last Thursday by the Jorf Lahmam and Aourache associations, in the presence of several associative and political actors of the province, is part of a series of activities aimed at engaging in collective reflection and proposing concrete actions to encourage young people to get involved in political life and to contribute to raising the level of political practice and the management of local affairs.

The work of this round table focused on the perception that young people have of politics, their attitude towards political life, the reality and reasons for youth abstention, and its effects on public policies and the management of local affairs. Highlighting the accumulation of certain electoral and political practices that lead to a rupture between young people, on the one hand, and politicians and elites, on the other, in addition to the lack of guidance for young people, the speakers at this meeting advocated actions aimed at bringing associative and political actors closer to young people. Likewise, they called for identifying and understanding the reasons for the indifference of this category towards political life, in order to raise their awareness of the need to use their right to vote as a means of actively contributing to the management of local affairs.