The United Nations will commemorate International Youth Day on August 12. Member states worldwide are invited to recognize the potential and challenges confronting their young populations, acknowledging that "[a]cross countries and communities, young people seek dignity, opportunity, meaningful participation, decent work, quality education, and a sustainable future." If youth represent the hope of future nations and societies, then it is incumbent upon those societies to ensure that the systems, economies, and social structures they inherit remain intact — and sufficiently dynamic and open for future generations to improve upon.

In the Philippines, this aspiration has long been an uphill battle.

The warning regarding Filipino students' "functional illiteracy" from the Final Report of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2), released last January, casts a long shadow not only over the educational growth of the country's youth but also over their capacity to upskill and secure gainful employment. The findings reinforced years of consistently poor showings in international benchmark assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, where Filipino learners have ranked near the bottom among participating countries. Ongoing disagreements, shortcuts, and ill-conceived policy debates on basic and higher education further erode confidence in the value of continuing education. A youth population ill-equipped to face developmental challenges does not bode well for the working sector they will eventually join — a particular concern for an economy in which the business-process outsourcing industry, employing well over a million Filipinos, depends heavily on a trainable, literate workforce. Compounding these pressures, recent projections indicate that the Philippines is on track to become an aging society by 2027, driven by declining fertility rates and a growing senior-age population — a transition that narrows the country's demographic dividend window and raises the stakes for preparing the current youth cohort to support a shrinking base of working-age adults.

Reflecting on these challenges — amid heavy rainfall that struck throughout the first week of August — the country also confronts an uncomfortable milestone. It has been nearly one year since the Senate Blue-Ribbon Committee launched its probe into the flood control anomalies and scandals that rocked the last quarter of 2025. The protests that have dogged the country's political classes since September 2025 reached their greatest strength when thousands of young people from universities, schools, religious denominations, and sectoral communities took to the streets with energy, calls for accountability, and a determination to stand up to power. Yet these movements are also at their weakest when seasonal commitments occupy the youth, or when they remain at arm's length due to a lack of credibility among mobilizing interest groups.

Now that the impeachment trial of Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio is being framed as the linchpin of these corruption scandals — alongside a barrage of political misadventures engineered by her allies in the Senate and beyond — there is a renewed risk of alienating the youth and young working population from state processes that confuse, exclude, or patronize them.

American scholar Pim Trommelen, in a recent article discussing the phenomenon of "oligarchic fatigue," describes it as "the experience of exhaustion that arises when people's attempts to engage in democratic practices are obstructed by oligarchs." According to Trommelen, this fatigue stems from either of two conditions: a population granted limited or minimal space for political engagement, mostly through elections; or structural burdens that limit and delegitimize the public's preferred modes of political action. The way forward, he suggests, lies in investing in spaces and means through which societies can cultivate attitudes of political freedom. These spaces need not be free from structural burdens and risks, but they should allow community and collective action to mitigate and protect people from such risks.

This principle has been positively demonstrated in countries like Ghana in 2024, where the prolonged domination of the incumbent ruling party galvanized the youth sector and contributed significantly to the opposition's electoral victories. Conversely, a failure to incorporate the demands and representations of the youth sector typically leads to their disengagement and alienation from political action, as Lebanon experienced during the Thawra uprising of 2019.

The contemporaneous experience of the Philippines' flood control protests last year continues to spark hope and potential for youth engagement and leadership, paralleling the Gen-Z "youthquakes" in Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco, India, Kenya, and Peru that have toppled ruling governments or forced policy concessions.

The risks and institutional roadblocks faced by the country's youth and young working population can thus be viewed in two ways. There is cause for discouragement that these formidable challenges will cripple the futures of the next generation. Alternatively, galvanized by the young's own dissatisfaction, older generations may join them in their marches, engagements, projects, learning experiences, and calls for reform and change.

The enthusiasm and sharp critique of a largely young online audience following the Vice President's impeachment trial demonstrate that not all online spaces are controlled by the disinformation networks of the erstwhile Marcos-Duterte nexus. The near-consensus among young leaders in support of a more stringent anti-dynasty law suggests that if their elders cannot be moved to break free from oligarchic hostage-taking, younger Filipinos are more determined to break those chains themselves. The dynamism and resolve of youth organizations supporting domestic mobilizations against global domineering projects — including the entry of Pax Silica, the Israel-led genocide in Palestine, and continued Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea — affirms that there is a path beyond tired and false policy dichotomies.

On a lighter note, the success of young professional tennis player Alexandra Eala — who has been supported throughout her career by her family, her field, and relevant stakeholders — is not merely a story of personal discipline, cultivated talent, and hard work. It also serves as proof of concept that when a community unites and invests in the growth and development of young people, excellence almost always follows, particularly when such support is sensitive and tailored to their genuine needs.

The question remains: what if this level of institutional and communal support were readily available to every young Filipino facing today's crises? And what if society stopped standing in the way of young Filipinos fighting for what is being denied them?

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Hansley A. Juliano serves as instructor with the Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University. He is completing his doctoral research at the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University.