Children’s and young people’s participation in development in the South and in urban regeneration in the North

This paper summarizes the varying reasons why children’s participation has emerged on development/regeneration agendas in both Northern and Southern contexts. Nongovernmental organizations and campaigning groups have played significant roles, championing the case for children’s involvement and transferring learning from experiences in the South to the North as well as vice versa. Despite these developing initiatives to enable children’s voices to be heard, there are still too many examples of tokenism, however, with major gaps between rhetoric and reality. The paper concludes by raising questions about possible ways forward, including questions about the need for wider institutional change.