Description
Alarm caused by the burgeoning global youth population and young people’s potential roles in causing or sustaining conflict have been well documented, whilst their contribution to building peace is often overlooked. Young people often present a combative or destabilising force within post-conflict communities, but they also work on the frontlines of peacebuilding, contributing to the rebuilding of civil society and the local economy. Their lack of political representation and their marginalisation from decision-making in many conflict-affected societies explains why these positive contributions go unrecognized, whilst disparities that young face in accessing economic, political and socio-cultural resources explains why the impact of youth peacebuilding activity is sometimes limited. Over the past 5 years, these challenges have been explored through research in five case sites as part of the programme “Youth, Violence and Conflict transformation”. The results of this research in Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Bosnia, will be presented in this panel, with the aim of understanding how can the peacebuilding sector can be enabled to listen and act upon youth voices in seeking to bring about political change and positive peace.
