History of the Danish Youth Council

The Danish Youth Council (DUF) was founded on the 25th of June 1940 by a range of youth organisations as a protest against the fascist trends of the time. They did not want to be a part of the Danish resistance movement because they believed that democracy should be taught in a non-violent way through dialogue, participation, and information. The basic goals of the organisation were to politicise Danish youth and to spread the idea of democracy as a way of living and thinking, not only a form of government.

Since the founding, DUF has increased the level of activities, the number of member organisations as well as fields of work:

In the 1950s, there was a focus on international youth work and DUF encouraged its members to participate in international activities. Several Danish youth leaders had leading positions in international organisations.

In the 1960s, DUF began advocating a lowering of the voting age. From 1961 it had been 21 years, but DUF wanted to strengthen the participation of young people through lowering the voting age to 18.

In the course of the 1970s the voting age was lowered, first to 20 and then in 1978 to 18 years. Furthermore, the Danish gambling monopoly was adopted in parliament and a part of the lottery profits went directly to the volunteer work of the youth organisations. This was a remarkable improvement of the economy of most of DUF’s members and had a strong, positive effect on the level and quality of activities and possibilities.   

In 1990 DUF had its 50-year anniversary. The 1990s was also the decade where DUF took two important new initiatives: One was the expansion of the subsidy system so that all child and/or youth organisations including non-members became eligible for subsidies through application to DUF. The other was the initiation of democratisation projects in the Middle East marking the beginning of a range of partnership projects between Danish youth organisations and youth organisations in the Middle East and developing countries.  

In the new millennium, an important issue for DUF has been to establish integration projects in member organisations and to ensure ethnic-minority participation in the DUF community. 

DUF is still dedicated to maintaining good conditions for volunteer organisations in Denmark and increasing the politicisation and participation of young people.