Young Cambodians have little understanding of their country's democratic institutions and struggle to get involved in issues that affect them, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said Thursday, according to dpa. A new survey commissioned by the UNDP found fewer than one in three young people were interested in politics. And while three-quarters had heard about parliament, 62 per cent of that number had no idea how it functioned. Two in three Cambodians are younger than 25. The survey, which was carried out by the BBC World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the UK broadcaster, also found that four-fifths of young people felt Cambodia was moving broadly in the right direction. The Trust's Colin Spurway, who led the study, said the fact that young people - particularly women - did not know about local issues or take part in solving them was "very striking." "Young people are not thinking of themselves as having a responsibility at their local or national level," he said. "Cambodia needs to look at the fact that young people don't feel it's their responsibility to know what is going on." The nationwide survey, which questioned 2,000 people aged between 15-24 and divided equally by gender, sought to discern attitudes to civic participation, democracy and electoral participation. Cambodia has local elections scheduled for 2012 and a general election planned for the following year. Spurway said the Trust had found one of the major barriers for young people taking part in civic life was older people. "Older people say: "We just don't believe they are ready yet"," Spurway said of attitudes towards the young. Among the other findings were that more than 90 per cent of Cambodia's youth either own a mobile phone or have access to one. The UNDP and the Trust will next year launch a national television programme aimed at trying to get young people more involved in civic life. Cambodia has the youngest population of any of the 10 states in the regional Association of South-East Asian Nations. The nation's skewed population is largely a consequence of the policies of the Khmer Rouge movement which ruled the country between 1975-79 when as many as 2.2 million people - more than a quarter of the population - died.
