Youth, Peace and Security: Fostering local and global exchange

Summary

The Ulster University, in partnership with The John and Pat Hume Foundation, the International Fund for Ireland, and Interpeace, has launched a Youth, Peace and Security Leadership Series to connect Northern Ireland youth work with the global YPS agenda, fostering local and global exchange and capacity building in peacebuilding.

Abstract

In response to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250, which acknowledges the positive role of youth in peace and conflict settings, Ulster University, along with its partners, initiated the Youth, Peace and Security Leadership Series. This series aims to elevate the visibility of young peacebuilders and enhance local capacities in youth leadership and peacebuilding. Since its inception in March 2021, the series has hosted four public seminars with significant attendance, featuring young leaders from various conflict-affected regions. The initiative emphasizes the importance of shifting from viewing youth as a security threat to recognizing them as essential contributors to peace. It combines public seminars with private, facilitated dialogues to create meaningful engagement and learning opportunities for young people, supported by organizations like the International Fund for Ireland, which selects participants for the private sessions.

Opinions

The Youth, Peace and Security Leadership Series is a crucial contribution to the UN's YPS agenda, highlighting the positive impact of youth in peacebuilding.
Awareness-raising through seminars is insufficient without genuine engagement from those in power to take young people's peacebuilding efforts seriously.
Private dialogues are an effective method for capacity building, allowing young leaders to discuss issues in a safe and curated environment.
The involvement of high-profile figures, such as the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, validates the work of local young peacebuilders and links it to the global YPS agenda.
The seminar series has revived the value of international sharing and learning, reminiscent of earlier peace process programs in Northern Ireland and Ireland, emphasizing the importance of maintaining such exchanges.
The authors, Professor Brandon Hamber and Eliz McArdle, advocate for the continuation and support of initiatives like the YPS Seminar Series, believing that Northern Ireland and Ireland have much to contribute to and learn from global peacebuilding processes.

Youth, Peace and Security: Fostering local and global exchange

Written by Brandon Hamber and Eliz McCardle

In December 2015, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2250 a landmark resolution recognising young people’s positive role in conflict and post-conflict settings. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres commissioned a global study on youth and peacebuilding entitled “The Missing Peace” authored by Graeme Simpson, which was presented to the Security Council and then the UN General Assembly in 20181. The report calls for a move away from a deficit model that sees young people as a threat to security. A key message is the importance of recognising and supporting young people as positive contributors to peace. Building on this report, the UN has continued to promote a Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda.

As a contribution to the YPS agenda, the Ulster University authors of this article initiated the Youth, Peace and Security Leadership Series with partners The John and Pat Hume Foundation, the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), and the global peacebuilding organisation Interpeace. The main aim behind the series is to connect Northern Ireland youth work with the global YPS agenda. The specific objectives are to raise the visibility of the role that young people can and do play in peacebuilding and to build local capacities in terms of YPS and leadership.

Launched in March 2021, four public seminars have taken place so far, with 620 attendees across the events. The series has featured young leaders as speakers from Northern Ireland, Libya, Somalia, former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka (seminars on YouTube). Graeme Simpson, author of the “The Missing Peace” Report, played a crucial role in identifying the international youth leaders who emerged during the report’s development.

Invitation to the second Youth, Peace and Security Seminar

Although the seminar turnout has been heartening, awareness-raising alone is limited as it requires those in positions of power to listen and take young people’s work seriously. For this reason, the seminar series has also utilised a capacity-building component using closed facilitated dialogue between youth workers and local and global peer leaders. The seminar series has effectively coupled the public online seminars with private dialogue sessions.

However, meaningful engagement with and between young people requires time and investment. Before the private dialogues, we worked with individual young leaders to help them plan and prepare to meet other local and global young leaders, focusing on the specific seminar themes (e.g. women and Peacebuilding, methods of youth work). Once ready for the private session, a closed meeting between young people from Northern Ireland and border counties and the global peacebuilders took place.

IFI helped select young people for these private sessions through their various projects. Young people joined from IFI-funded groups, including Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum (CCRF), Limestone United, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland and Focus Family Resource Centre.

While there was some initial anxiety about being in the spotlight with adult spectators watching, a curated, private and facilitated approach helped to mitigate any concerns and gave space for the participants to voice their opinions. This approach resulted in a rich discussion and helped identify issues that could be taken to the public seminars.

One of the most notable of these private sessions was with the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, who met with 23 young people online for a private session before the public seminar. Prior to meeting the UN Envoy, young people in Northern Ireland and border counties explored the theme of the role of youth in peacebuilding.

In the private session, participants shared perspectives on the leadership acts and actions they undertake and their visions for peace. The UN Envoy helped link their work and the global YPS agenda. The meeting was valuable in discussing strategies for addressing YPS issues and local youth workers and participants said that they felt affirmed by being listened to by the UN Secretary General’s Youth Envoy. The participants then took this learning into the public seminar that followed.

Overall, a considered dialogue ensued in all the private sessions and public events. Global and local considerations were interwoven with a respectful listening and sharing tone. The presence of outsiders with different perspectives was valuable. There is little doubt that the eminence of the global young peacebuilders was important for the local young people. Activism was stimulated by interacting with international YPS advocates.

This type of international sharing was the hallmark of many earlier programmes during the peace process in Northern Ireland and Ireland but has decreased in the last few years. The experience of the YPS Seminar Series suggests it is vital to support this type of work. Northern Ireland and Ireland has much to share and gain from being more centrally keyed into global processes such as the YPS agenda.

This article was first published in Fund Focus, The Newsletter of the International Fund for Ireland, September 2022.

Professor Brandon Hamber is John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace based at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) and the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University.

Eliz McArdle is a Lecturer in Community Youth Work at Ulster University and Course Director for the Certificate in Youth Studies with franchised partner, YouthAction Northern Ireland. She is member of the Centre for Youth Research and Dialogue at Ulster University.