Young people are not just leaders for tomorrow, but are also leaders for today. This sentiment is echoed in the UN Security Council Resolution 2250, where there is the recognition that “young people play an important and positive role in the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security”.
It is noteworthy that African institutions, including the African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs), recognise and celebrate youth as key stakeholders in developing sustainable peace on the continent, especially through the normative guide of the AU Continental Framework for Youth, Peace and Security.
Involving young people in peacebuilding helps combat the sense of disenfranchisement that is often a motivating factor for young people who commit acts of violence
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In recognising the importance of this framework in facilitating the effective and meaningful participation of youth, ACCORD, in collaboration with the AU Youth for Peace Africa Programme ran a series of dialogues that aimed to promote discussion around youth, peace and security, and provide the space to raise awareness on, and popularise, the framework.
The broad spectrum of panellists allowed for rich discussions around the pillars of youth participation, prevention, protection, coordination and partnerships, disengagement and reintegration. Each panellist brought with them a wealth of experience and passion, providing a number of key findings and recommendations that could help inform regional and national action plans.
Nearly all panellists throughout the dialogue series pointed out that the discussions happening at an international level, which lead to things like the Continental Framework on Youth, Peace and Security, must be domesticated to regional, national and grassroots level. This is because frameworks are there to give local policy-makers direction and guidance on how to develop their necessary action plans.
A theme that has emerged is that there is significant overlap between youth participation and youth conflict prevention. Involving young people in peacebuilding helps combat the sense of disenfranchisement that is often a motivating factor for young people who commit acts of violence, particularly because this sense of disenfranchisement can be exploited by violent groups.
Youth participation should be inclusive and integrated deeply in dialogues, so young people do not inherit socio-economic and political problems that could have been negated through their involvement. It has become easy to provide access to the youth through various Internet forums and social media platforms, which makes facilitating the engagement of the youth not only fundamental to achieve their meaningful participation and in allowing them to act as partners in development, but also very doable.
It is crucial to ensure that concerted, collaborative and cooperative youth approaches are being employed at cross-sectoral levels because these are more effective and help dispel stereotypes about the inability of young people to organise themselves to substantively contribute to peace and security. Collaboration and complementary capacities can greatly increase the efficacy and strategic productivity of youths’ political spaces. Young people, and youth groups, have a tendency to work as individuals or in silos, seeing themselves as working in competition with one another. This competitive space stifles the impact these groups and individuals can have.
When considering young women in particular, older women are often assumed to, and thus afforded the right to speak on behalf of women generally and may function as gatekeepers. For this reason, it is often important to be specific and explicit when discussing the participation of youth, particularly when building an organisation or network. It is often not enough to say things like ‘young’ or ‘women’, there is a need to say things as specific as ‘young rural women’ or ‘young urban women’. This specificity is essential in ensuring that participation is meaningful.
In terms of coordination, young people’s ability to transmit information fast, means that they are excellent at gathering early warning data, and this could also make them particularly well placed to implement preventative measures. Networking and communication systems developed by young people have a lot to teach older generations with regard to translating early warning into early responses to conflict.
There must be a concerted effort to build capacities, including technical and institutional knowledge, amongst young people so that they are operationally ready to participate in peace and security processes, both in their own right and in collaboration with their elders. Youth groups need to build their internal capacities and institutional knowledge so as to scale up their operations.
A good motto for young people to adopt would be to “think globally and act locally. To ‘think globally’ means that youth groups should connect with existing norms, institutions and frameworks from places like the AU, United Nations (UN) and RECs. It is crucial for them to understand the existing frameworks so that they can either draw from them or begin to reshape them. ‘Acting locally’ is crucial because local factors constantly affect the lives of most young people, and actions must be built around a nuanced and contextually specific understanding of issues.
Early peace education of children and youths can help prevent violent conflict by inculcating in young people the skills and values needed to manage conflicts constructively. This could take the form of internships and volunteering but could also be an addition to the syllabuses in schools. Including peace education in syllabuses can help many young people make mature, informed decisions and prevent radicalisation.
Peer-to-peer sharing is particularly important because while there is great demand for youth participation, there is a deficit of youth peace educators. There are significant rural-urban divides in terms of both opportunities for youth to engage with peace and security programmes, and the ability for young people to access information. Young people in urban areas are more likely to be familiar with frameworks and peace processes, however, there is a failure to communicate these ideas to those in rural areas, who are often greatly affected by conflict. Cross-communication is also important in that it allows for those in more stable and secure environments to get new perspectives on issues of conflict, which will help to inform them on how to approach these issues. These unique views can function as an asset when formulating inclusive frameworks and practices. Young people fall on all sides of the debates around peace and security, with different levels of involvement in conflict and different levels of privilege and disadvantage. Intra-youth dialogues and communication is therefore useful in order to build a broader understanding and a united front.
Structural issues such as poor governance and weak institutions make it difficult for any framework to be implemented. Good governance therefore becomes pivotal to the effective involvement of youth in peace and security
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Very few people are aware of the protections for young people. This applies both to young people themselves and to those members of national governments nominally overseeing the implementation of national action plans. For youth, this makes it difficult to advocate for rights which they do not know they have.
Structural issues such as poor governance and weak institutions make it difficult for any framework to be implemented. Good governance therefore becomes pivotal to the effective involvement of youth in peace and security. While frameworks and laws are important, these are fairly inconsequential if they are not implemented and enforced. A good example of this is the fact that 15-18 year olds are ‘double protected’ as both youths and as children. However, violent extremism recruitment usually happens between the ages of 17 to 26. So the ‘double layer’ of protection alone is not sufficient to adequately protect youth and prevent their involvement in conflict. It should be coupled with awareness and political will around implementation.
The inability to reintegrate and disengage former and current youth combatants is a systemic and structural issue that cannot be fixed with guns. The economic impact of violence to the global economy in 2020 was $14.96 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. In the same year, the world spent almost $2 trillion on defence. It appears that the world tries to focus on investing and dealing with violence without addressing the underlying causes. There is enough money to ensure Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) and preventative measures are enforced, but what is being prioritised, is the issue. Even where there are DDR processes, simply removing youth from violent groups does not mean they have been de-radicalised nor that they have been cured of the various physical and psychological harms they have undergone. There is further work that needs to be done to bring them back into society. The mental well-being of former young combatants needs to be prioritised and further explored.
In conclusion, to create stable societies, the traumatising and destructive experiences that conflict-affected youth have undergone need to be countered, and youth-led peace and security initiatives encouraged, supported and celebrated. As a youth leader from Rwanda said: “If youth can be a powerful force that can destroy a whole nation, why do people overlook their resources when working for peace?”. It is clear that at the policy level, we need to ask ourselves, what are the reasons why young people take up arms? How can we better protect them? How can we involve youth in conflict prevention efforts? What needs to be done to reintegrate them back into society successfully? How else can we support inclusivity and youth-led peace and security initiatives? Within our young, dynamic and evolving continent, answering these questions is critical to ensuring sustainable peace. And we no longer have the luxury of answering these questions for the future. We must answer them for now.
Savannah Wilmot is a Programme Officer and Adam Randera and Caitlin Broeders are interns, at ACCORD
