Youth understanding of citizenship rights

This paper reports on findings from a recent PhD study that explored how young adults in Lesotho understood
and applied their citizenship rights and responsibilities. It aims to inform proposed revisions to the 1995 Lesotho
National Youth Policy that highlighted concerns that young adults are caught between the tensions of traditional
values and their expectations of human rights that are internationally recognised and to which Lesotho is a
signatory. The focus in this paper is on exploring the extent to which Basotho youth understood and behaved in
relation to communitarian, civic republican, and cosmopolitan style citizenships. It also explores how and where
youth learned their citizenship values with a view to recommending curriculum reform in the country’s nonformal
youth programmes. In this qualitative study youth from three different groups were interviewed and
invited to provide and discuss photos of their citizenship activities. Recommendations included the need to
develop a broader understanding of cosmopolitan and civic republican civic values and to include in a youth
curriculum an opportunity to discuss intergenerational tensions that challenge how youth reconcile their human
rights entitlements with traditional community responsibilities.