No Time to Wait

Following her selection as a finalist for the 2025 Kofi Annan NextGen Democracy Prize, IFES interviewed Marharyta to discuss the ways in which young people advance and promote democracy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

My name is Marharyta Vorykhava, and I am a Belarusian youth activist currently serving as the Advisor on Youth Policy in the Office of former presidential candidate and political activist Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. I have been working with Belarusian youth since 2016. 

After 2020, following the post-elections crackdown on civil society in Belarus, my work shifted into exile - defending the rights of students and young people under an authoritarian regime, building democratic alternatives both in and outside of Belarus, and representing youth voices in international platforms like the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 

My approach is simple: we don’t have time to wait. Even in exile, young people can and must shape the future.

Fundamentally, my work is about one person helping another – not a big campaign or public success. 

I see this clearly through my most memorable achievement to date. In 2021, a student reached out after being expelled for political reasons. He didn’t know what to do - he was scared, isolated, and had no plan. I connected him with a lawyer, helped him get support to leave the country, and later he got accepted into a university abroad. A year later, he messaged me saying, “I’m safe. I’m studying again. Thank you.”  Through helping one another, we begin to build relationships and establish trust.

These relationships are critical in an era of democratic backsliding, both in Belarus and around the world, as young people work to safeguard democratic cultures across borders. What we are seeing is that the democratic cultures led by young people are relational, not institutional. These cultures are built on trust, humor, and shared struggle – and that kind of culture is harder to break. 

In my experience, Belarusian youth operate under constant risk, but they have adapted, adopting strategies that prioritize the safety and wellbeing of their peers and their communities. For example, young activists use anonymous Telegram channels to ensure digital security. They have established mutual aid groups to help students avoid military conscription. Young people’s meme pages on social media deconstruct propaganda faster and better than NGOs can do. Young people’s work is decentralized, emotionally sharp, and built for the algorithm – drawing from the anti-authoritarian playbook rather than traditional civil society strategies and approaches.

There is so much to learn from young people’s leadership and energy generating change from the ground up. My advice to democracy practitioners is:

• Don’t romanticize the grassroots - fund it.
• Don’t try to “give a voice” to people - listen those already speaking.
• Don’t get stuck thinking in electoral cycles – democracy isn’t built in four-year terms; it’s built in everyday relationships, in rights-based infrastructure, and in people who keep working even after it gets hard. 

The real work done in defense of democracy isn’t always visible, nor is it easy – but it is the work that makes democratic resilience possible.