The analysis 'Delayed youth participation – Local elections 2021' looks at the youth representation in the local elections in North Macedonia, held in 2021. The analysis shows how young people are represented and positioned in the voting lists, as well as how often are young people proposed as candidates for the key positions in the elections. Together with women and people with disabilities, young people are one of the most marginalised groups, in terms of political participation.

Although a quarter of the population are young people under the age of 29, only 3% of the mayoral candidates in the local elections held in October 2021 were young. Of them, only two were elected as the first people of the municipalities. These are the findings of the research conducted during the local elections in the country by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

Jovana Gjorgjiovska and Blazen Maleski, authors of the analysis "Delayed youth participation - Local elections 2021" emphasized that young people need more time to decide to get involved in political life. Young people in the country have a greater chance of being elected as municipal councillors than as mayors or MPs, and only 2.5% of the mayors are young while only three percent of the mayoral candidates were young. At the same time, only two thirds of the young candidates were proposed in rural municipalities is also interesting.

"This means that young people have much more access to political life in rural municipalities, which is interesting for us because a large part of young people often study in other larger municipalities or in the city of Skopje," the authors of the study pointed out.

A total of 43 political entities did not propose young candidates for mayors at all, including the candidacies supported by independent groups of citizens.

It is necessary to discuss the disappointing research results and delve deeper into this problem. Most of the issues that directly affect the quality of life of young people are matters of local self-government, so it is extremely important that the local self-government bodies include young people who will articulate the needs of this group of citizens.