Online Desk: French Ambassador to Bangladesh Marie Masdupuy on Wednesday expressed her admiration for the youth of Bangladesh when it comes to Climate Action.

“We should take them as an example: they act decisively at local level, helping people to concretely adapt to the impacts of climate change in an efficient way,” she said.

The French envoy said traditional politicians started to listen to them, and this will grow in the short- to medium-term future, no doubt about this.

“You might say they are far from grassroots politics. I don’t think this is true. They are actually pioneering the future of politics: global problems, local solutions,” said the ambassador.

HerNet Foundation hosted the latest episode of “Bangladesh Decides: The Youth Speaks” (BDYS) in Dhaka.

The event is envisioned and conceptualised by the founding CEO and MD of HerNet TV, Alisha Pradhan.

This event, co-founded and supported by the EU Embassy in Bangladesh, is a strong testament to their commitment to empowering the youth of Bangladesh, said the organisers.

Ambassador Masdupuy urged the youth not to wait but practice democracy in their early ages, by choosing their school and university representatives, avoid extreme thinking, study history, their own and that of the rest of the world.

“This will allow you to know better what are the best choices for your own village, town or country. And beware of the massive disinformation campaigns being waged on social networks,” she mentioned.

Sharing her own stories, the ambassador said, “My dad was never enlisted in a political party, neither my mom. But we were having heated discussions when I was still a small kid and they were active in trade unions, in their respective professional branches.”

She said it is a fact that youth, everywhere, feel underrepresented, massively do not cast their votes in any ballots and less and less adhere to political parties.

“This entails the risk that their opinions on various issues will indeed not be taken into consideration in the programmes of the political parties,” said the envoy.

Ambassador Masdupuy said being challenged is always a good thing. “Remember our causes, ideals and goals in the 1960’s and 1970’s: for example, we wanted more rights for women and a reunited European family. We achieved the latter and saw considerable progress on gender equality.”

The envoy said not only everybody has a voice which deserves to be heard, but the youth has a special responsibility in challenging the established people by questioning them about what they identified as main issues for the future, their future. “It is obvious today with climate change issues.”

The ambassador said youth is quite leading in social protest movements, be it the MeToo movement, in France the yellow jackets protests or climate demonstrations.

“But still, they will feel being excluded from decision-making circuits and under-represented in elected bodies,” she said.