This theoretical paper examines how student-led activism can advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and position youth as integral participants in the future, rather than recipients. It integrates the actions of the marginalized through activism (SDG 10), systematic change by praxis-based education (SDG 4 and SDG 12), and cross-national collaboration (SDG 17), as it is based on social movement theory (resource mobilization and framing), critical pedagogy (Freire), intergenerational justice (Rawls extended), ecological citizenship, and cosmopolitanism (Beck). The Activism-SDG Nexus model explains how inputs (education, mobilisation) lead to collective action that results in policy influence, and how feedback loops identify pathways to achieve this by empowering people through iterative empowerment. Nevertheless, despite obstacles such as structural inequalities and scalability challenges, youth activism redefines the implementation of the SDGs as dialogic and youth-focused, thereby adding moral urgency and transformative agency to sustainability.
Authors : Smaranika Samal, Ishita Mishra, Dipanshu Sharma
Keywords: youth activism, student voice, UN SDGs, empowerment theory, intergenerational justice, and critical pedagogy
