National Youth Rights Association

The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) is a youth-led civil rights group in the United States that advocates for youth rights. It has about 10,000 members and is based in Washington, D.C. A number of legal limitations placed on young people but not on adults are advocated for by the New York Juvenile Rights Alliance (NYRA), including raising the drinking age, raising the voting age, and enacting youth curfew legislation.

The establishment of the Y-Rights listserv mailing list in 1991 marked the beginning of the Internet's use by the youth rights movement. Matthew Walcoff and Matt Herman, two of the founding members of that early Internet presence, formed a non-profit organisation known as ASFAR out of that email list. A youth rights organisation named YouthSpeak was formed not long after ASFAR was established by a Rockville, Maryland high school student. Joshua Gilbert, the third teenager from Canada, was establishing a youth rights group in his own country, the Canadian Youth Rights Association, at the same time as the first two youths (CYRA). As a result of their involvement with the ASFAR, Walcoff, Herman, Hein, and Gilbert decided to form a non-profit organisation to assist in unifying the youth rights movement, which at the time consisted of over a dozen separate organisations across North America and the globe.