Create spaces to express opinion
Ceate spaces for youth to expresstheir opinions – and listen to them: Matilda Flemming, leading coordinator at the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY peacebuilders) says: “Youth voices in peacebuilding are present and everywhere, but sometimes not recognized. The creation of spaces for youth to express their opinion to decision makers and broader society ensures that they have the opportunity to be heard.”
In practice, one needs to encourage youth and adults, such as parents, teachers and community and religious leaders, to support the formation of youth groups that offer young people a chance to formulate their opinions.
Enhance peacebuilding skills
Enhance peacebuilding knowledge and skills of young people. Give youth access to the teachers, facilitators, educational programs and networks that can boost their conflict resolution and leadership skills.
Facilitate connection of young activists on the individual and organizational level in order to share ideas, challenges and best practices. Many projects use youth interests such as arts, sports, media, informal learning and personal relationships to convey peacebuilding skills, such as Football for peace does with Israeli and Palestinian youth, for example.
Trust between youth and governments
Build trust between youth and governments. There are few ways for young people to effectively access policy-making and decision-making levels, which is why governments are seen as prone to clientelism and corruption. Likewise, governments are rarely interested in the view of young people and often have different priorities in peacebuilding.
In order to bride this gap, activities promoting the legitimization of youth and fostering their representation in policy making are necessary, such as joint workshops, community projects, or platforms between youth and government officials/members of parliament.
In Tunisia, dozens of youth councils were appointed on the local level after the Arab Spring revolution in 2011. Six years later, the youth councils have gained trust by local authorities and are now consulted on issues on budgeting and spending.
Promote inter-generational exchange
The opinions of adults are deeply influential to young people, yet adults often perceive youth engagement as a threat to their status and power. There need to be partnerships with community groups and elder councils where young people can demonstrate their benefits to peace projects. These communication channels can enable young people and adults to identify, face and tackle common problems, finding sustainable solutions through cooperation.
The Open School Programme in Brazil used intergenerational gatherings in the school context to make the schools safer places in general.
Strengthening monitoring
Strengthen monitoring and evaluation: a step that is still very much underestimated in many programming and project areas, monitoring and evaluation need to be undertaken, improved and systematized. The lack of financial support of youth-focused peacebuilding initiatives leads to an underfunded and flawed M&E – methodology which in turn impedes visibility and sustainability of initiatives.
“Surveys, focus groups and interviews are considered as the gold standard of inquiry, but those are adult methods of articulating evidence and showcasing impact. Instead, we should make evaluation conversational and youth-led, as this works for everyone.”
Support for positive contributions
Support youths who are positively contributing to their communities: as many initiatives aim on supporting young people who have engaged in violence in one way or another, the impression of bad behavior being rewarded emerges.
Incentives for positive contributions could be simple rewarding systems such as certificates, prizes, scholarship, media coverage, public honors that inspire peers to positively participate.