13TH HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM

Youth of the World : Freedom, Identity, Future

Alongside the concerts, and true to its commitment to fostering dialogue and the circulation of ideas, the Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival has always created spaces for reflection and debate.

Established in 2012, the Human Rights Forum has become one of the Festival’s key highlights, bringing together researchers, public officials, artists and civil society actors to engage with major contemporary issues.

Organized in partnership with the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), it explores, with both rigor and freedom of tone, key themes such as youth, diasporic dynamics, cultural transformations, and issues of equality.

More than ever, young people stand as a defining lens through which to understand the present. They are both directly exposed to the major crises of our time — environmental, technological, social, and political — and actively engaged in shaping new forms of response and transformation. Constantly connected yet often insufficiently heard, they navigate between global openness and local anchoring, between aspirations for individual freedom and a growing sense of collective constraint, between hope and uncertainty.

For the first time in decades, a generation is coming of age with the conviction that the future may be more fragile than the past. Climate disruption, prolonged conflicts, increasingly precarious life trajectories, and the pervasive influence of technology on both private and public life contribute to a shifting horizon. In this context, youth is no longer perceived solely as a promise, but as a space where tensions between democratic ideals and systemic crises become particularly visible. It is this transformation that the 2026 Forum seeks to examine.

In response to these pressures, young people are asserting their presence across multiple arenas: in public spaces, on artistic stages, within universities, and across digital platforms. Through civic engagement, creative expression, environmental action, and social innovation, they are redefining the terms of participation. Far from forming a unified bloc, they reflect diverse experiences shaped by geography, inequality, gender, and history. What they share, however, is a sense of urgency — a determination to rethink the frameworks of the world they are inheriting.