I. The Crisis We Face
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.”
– John F. Kennedy.
The world we live in is struck by crisis after crisis. The constantly looming threat of ecological disaster, nuclear war, stagflation, and fascist takeover has all managed to strike at society’s collective need for activism. Unfortunately, the political climate is as uncertain as ever, with a genocide in Gaza and tensions in the Middle East skyrocketing, the future appears to be anything but guaranteed. But for many around the world, their crisis has already begun. Born into conditions echoing the moral horror of past atrocities, Palestinians are forced to live under a regime of surveillance, siege, and death. Born into extractivist violence, the Congolese people have constantly been victims of logics of sacrifice that allow parasitic consumption to take place in other parts of the globe.
While we are faced with the threat of a crisis, we are also faced with a light much more powerful; a potential to manifest new futures, to manifest a third horizon. Because the crisis has already hit billions, we need to mobilize this horizon.
Importantly, we are a generation born into crisis – of climate, of housing, of democracy itself. The world we inherit is fractured not by fate, but by deliberate policy decisions rooted in extraction, exclusion, and empire. And so, as the generation born into crisis, we must ensure that we are heard, not because we think in quarters like current politicians, but because we think in generations.
II. On Existing Institutions
Current institutions haven’t failed. They’re functioning the way they were meant to.
The institutions entrusted with solving crisis have, time and time again, betrayed that responsibility. In moments of profound injustice, they offer rhetoric. In the face of genocide, they issue statements. When action is needed, they consult, delay, or manage. Think tanks rewrite imperial consensus into policy memos. Nonprofits speak of inclusion while competing for foundation grants. Governments chase bipartisan compromise while communities starve, drown, and burn. What we are told is progress is often just the repackaging of stagnation – growth without justice, peace without liberation. And that liberation is in dire need for children around the globe, for children in areas that are victims to an imperial crisis.
The problem here is that too many policy spaces are allergic to truth. They refuse to name genocide and apartheid – as if silence were neutrality. But neutrality is complicity. We live in a world where the interests of oil companies, defense contractors, and hedge funds are framed as “realistic,” while justice is dismissed as “idealistic.”
They are too focused on attracting donors, too focused on growing a base, too focused on maintaining the current state of affairs. The devastating reality here has become increasingly clear – crises that are writ large considered to be disastrous are oftentimes ignored because of funding interests. Oil companies legitimize harmful epistemologies of climate denial by generously donating to academic research organizations in order to bleach the harsh reality of their actions.
Those actions are harmful.
Those actions put society in crisis.
Even worse, those actions place the youth in permanent, potentially irreconcilable crisis, in a time when their voices are rarely given a platform.
III. What We Stand For – The Third Horizon
The Third Horizon represents a politics beyond stagnation and crisis management – a just, post-imperial, post-extractive world that is horizon-bound but within reach. We imagine a third horizon: a future beyond managed decline and austerity. One where policy is rooted in reparative justice, democratic control, and ecological safety. Our vision is not simply an imaginative horizon, but a material necessity.
Our Commitments
- Youth-led, not youth-washed: We don’t perform inclusion, we only include high-quality and thought out articles.
- Grounded expertise: We pair data with lived experience.
- No neutrality on injustice: Silence, in moments of violence, is complicity.
- Accessible politics: We write and organize in a language the public can understand and act on.
- Anti-Imperialist and Intersectional: From Palestine to Congo, we reject the global color lines of extraction and occupation.
Our Theory of Change
We believe real change comes from those living the consequences of broken systems – not from elites or distant policymakers. Youth have always been at the center of social movements, but their voices are too often ignored or watered down. Third Horizon exists to shift that. We amplify youth-led research and policy ideas rooted in justice and solidarity. We’re not here to tweak the status quo; we want to transform it. By combining lived experience with rigorous research, we challenge the structures that keep people oppressed and create space for new futures.
Building Coalitions and Campaigns
Our work goes beyond writing. We build coalitions that bring together youth across movements, identities, and geographies to build collective power. Our campaigns turn policy into action, connecting ideas to real struggles on the ground. Whether it’s Gaza, the Congo, or housing justice in U.S. cities, we center frontline voices. We know lasting change comes through solidarity and shared power – not lone heroes or empty promises.
Lived Experience
Our institution hosts a wonderful and unique “Lived Experience” tab, where students are encouraged to find people who are living through or have lived through real humanitarian crises around the world and engage in meaningful dialogue with them in hopes of restoring humanity.
And Now, We Need You
A Call To Action
We need students from all over the world to write for us. We need students like you, students who deeply care about politics but don’t have the means to voice their cries.
Change requires all of us. We invite youth from everywhere to join this fight – as writers, mentors, organizers, and supporters. Third Horizon is a space for those who refuse to settle for a future shaped by injustice. Here your voice matters and builds a movement beyond imperialism and extraction. Together, we’ll turn crisis into possibility and hope into real action.
To us and many others, the Third Horizon Policy Institute stands as the future of policy, authored by its inheritors.
Written by the Third Horizon Team
