Seizing the Moment: Youth, Amicability, and Security between Action and Avoidance
Amid global crises, decision makers have the opportunity to seize the moment to meaningfully support and include youth. Will they take action?
Introduction: Youth under threat
Globally, young people are under threat. Their ability to live peaceful lives, as well as to participate in the political and social life of their communities and countries, is at risk in many places, and in the worst situations, their very lives are in danger daily. With the rise of conflicts, wars, polarization, and populism across the globe, in 2023, we saw the highest number of civilian deaths since World War II, with a 122% increase in civilian casualties compared to the previous year. It also featured the highest number of state-based conflicts in decades. Since October 2023, the war in Gaza has, on conservative calculations, claimed the lives of over 44,466 people (almost half of which are children), while more than 1.9 million individuals—approximately 90% of Gaza’s population—have been forcibly displaced, living in dire conditions without adequate access to water, food, or healthcare services. Beyond the immediate threats, young people face long-term impacts, including trauma, missed education, the impact of no university in Gaza still standing, and health consequences.
Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, since the beginning of October 2024, had killed more than 4,000 people and displaced over 1.2 million individuals before a fragile ceasefire took effect on November 27, 2024. In Sudan, since early 2023, a brutal civil war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions, with widespread reports of sexual violence against women and girls, including rape, killings, and assaults. Beyond the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has entered its third year, with at least 11,743 civilians killed and ongoing impacts on young people’s mental health and hopes for the future. In Myanmar, a largely forgotten conflict continues into its fourth year, marked by atrocities such as war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide and the persistent protest and resistance by Myanmar’s youth despite grave risks.
2024 also marked the most significant election year in human history. However, the outcomes of these elections brought little hope for millions of young people worldwide. The election of Donald Trump in the United States, the victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India—a nation with approximately 400 million young people alone and the rise of right-wing governments in Europe raised serious concerns about youth participation in political affairs, the proliferation of misinformation, and the spread of hate speech.
The brutal war in Gaza provoked a massive global movement of students and young people advocating for a ceasefire, justice, and peace in Palestine and around the world. Youth-led groups demanded action from the U.S. to Europe, Latin America, Asia, and other regions.
However, the war has left these groups facing significant uncertainty and grappling with profound questions: To what extent is the international community capable of preventing atrocities like those in Gaza, which the International Court of Justice described as plausible genocide? Are the commitments made by member states to advance the role of young people in peace and security truly real and achievable? Meanwhile, in the Middle East, young peacebuilders grapple with a larger and even more significant and alarming question: Can non-violence and peaceful youth action stop atrocities and war crimes?
The failure of the international community to prevent these atrocities has stoked young people, raising mistrust in national and international institutions and their ability or willingness to achieve peace and security to protect human rights. In both democratic and authoritarian countries, many young people and students were assaulted by institutions and police when they peacefully protested war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Promise and potential of the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda
Against this fraught and challenging context, young people continue to advocate and work for peace and justice, just as they have been doing for decades if not centuries. Young people have long been at the forefront of civil-rights, pro-democracy, anti-apartheid, environmental, and peace and justice movements around the world. Their persistence in the face of innumerable challenges and often great personal risks evidences the significant role young people can play in addressing security crises and building peaceful and stable societies.
The United Nations Security Council finally recognized this in 2015 and, for the first time, dramatically shifted the way in which they talked about young people in the world’s highest security forum. In December 2015, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security, recognizing “the important and positive contribution of youth in efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security”, and outlined five ‘pillars’ of action: participation, protection, prevention, partnerships, and disengagement and reintegration. Resolution 2250 became the basis for what is now known as the Youth, Peace, and Security agenda, an international policy architecture designed to enable and mobilize support for young people in formal decision-making processes and informal peacebuilding practices.
Since the adoption of the YPS agenda in December 2015, significant efforts have been made to help member states, civil society, and youth organizations translate this agenda into actionable practice. Following the adoption of Resolution 2250, the UN Security Council issued two follow-up resolutions on Youth, Peace, and Security: Resolution 2419 in 2018, which was unanimously adopted and reaffirmed the critical role that young people play in peacebuilding and sustaining peace, and Resolution 2535 in 2020, which emphasized the importance of youth protection and established a regular biennial reporting requirement on the implementation of the YPS agenda, including the three Security Council resolutions, by the UN Secretary-General.
Since 2015, a handful of states have adopted YPS National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement these resolutions on the ground: Finland, the Philippines, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, young people have yet to feel the impact of these efforts on the ground. For instance, in the Philippines, the NAP, ‘launched’ in 2022, has yet to be publicly published. NAPs are under development in many other countries, with the adoption of ‘roadmaps’ being one of the actions encouraged in recent UN Secretary-General reports. Development of NAPs can function to embed youth inclusion in national policy frameworks, but progress is varied and dispersed, with little accountability yet.
At the regional level, the League of Arab States launched the Arab Strategy for Youth, Peace, and Security (2023–2028) in August 2024. At the global level, the States of Qatar, Finland, and Colombia hosted the High-Level Global Conference on Youth-Inclusive Peace Processes in 2020 and launched a five-year strategic action plan on youth-inclusive peace processes as a key outcome document. Additionally, the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs launched a five-year strategic plan on Youth, Peace, and Security.
Young people have also been incredibly active around the YPS agenda, seeing in it a chance for their voices, efforts, and plans to reach a wider audience, be seen with legitimacy, and be engaged as partners and collaborators on peace and security work. Informal networks of youth have coalesced into organized coalitions at national and regional levels, including for example, the Nigerian Coalition on YPS, Coalition Congolaise JPS, and the Grupo Impulsor Nacional de la Resolución 2250 in El Salvador, or the regional MENA Coalition on YPS provides safe spaces virtually and in person for young peopel in the Arab region to connect, heal and take collective actions for just and peaceful region.
Despite the great risk posed by the continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon and the lack of resources, youth-led organisations are on the ground with communities, building peace and working to mitigate the horrific effects of these wars. In Gaza, the Social Developmental Forum – SDF is working with communities, providing essential services, creating spaces for dialogue among young people in Gaza, and giving access to education for children who have lost their schools. Meanwhile, In Lebanon, organisations like Peace of Art are present in war zones, providing displaced people with shelter, food, and support for countless families devastated by the war.
Over the past ten years, young peacebuilders have made good use of the global attention of the YPS agenda. However, it has not been without its challenges. Young people face persistent exclusion, marginalization, and dismissal of knowledge; they lack resources and support for their work, and they often face significant risks and dangers in their work. These challenges were clearly outlined in the comprehensive study mandated by the UN Security Council, The Missing Peace: Independent Progress Study on Youth, Peace, and Security. The particular risks faced by young people were also detailed in the report: If I Disappear: Global Report on Protecting Young People in Civic Space.
Despite the initial groundswell of support for the YPS agenda, and despite the very obvious impacts of persistent violence and insecurity on young people’s lives around the world, there has not always been sustained or meaningful support and follow-through for the principles and actions of the YPS agenda by those with the power to effect change. The challenges of persisting exclusion, resourcing, political will, protection, and championing the agenda and the work of young people themselves raise questions about the shared responsibility of committing to the promises of the agenda itself and the real-world advocacy and leadership of young people.
Overcoming ‘working avoidance’ and committing to youth
Strategic Plans, regional strategies, National Action Plans, and other commitments to the YPS agenda are only meaningful if they are enacted if they are evaluated, and if there is accountability for both the progress and success and the limitations or failures. The breadth and diversity of actions and promises on the YPS agenda gives us a place to ask about accountability to and for youth and to question whether these efforts have resulted in meaningful actions or are potentially examples of work avoidance.
Work avoidance is a concept described by Professor Ron Heifetz at the Harvard Kennedy School. He describes it as actions taken by individuals or groups to avoid addressing complex challenges by focusing on tasks that are more comfortable or technically feasible and do not cause discomfort or upset anyone or stakeholders instead of focusing on the root causes of the issue. Work avoidance is a mechanism used to escape the stress triggered by complex challenges and the adaptive work needed to solve these challenges. Examples of work avoidance are that one stakeholder, instead of asking difficult questions about why youth are not included in a position of power and why violence occurs to them, create less complex processes such as organizing conferences, drafting a new youth policy, or forming new youth advisory bodies for example.
The often-used cliche that ‘youth is the future’ is a rhetorical form of work avoidance: if young people are deferred to the future, their voices, concerns, and even activities are not as important in the present. The potential danger of an agenda with many ‘Strategic’ Plans’ and policies is the existence of a plan is seen as progress itself rather than accountable action on the commitments within it. It can also encourage a focus on goals that are good for press releases but not for practical progress for youth or peace.
Thus, work avoidance is dangerous as it wastes financial and human resources while neglecting real challenges. It delays effective solutions and shifts attention away from addressing pressing issues. Youth-led groups, civil society organizations, and UN agencies must be vigilant in avoiding the work avoidance trap. This can be achieved by asking critical questions, such as: What is the purpose of this process or action?; Whom does it serve?; Was the problem well-defined before designing the solution?; Is the approach inclusive?; Is it realistic and actionable? And what might be missing, such as data, resources, or perspectives?
As we reach the first decade of the YPS agenda and face a global landscape full of uncertainty, violence, and insecurity for young people and their communities, answering these questions is urgent and essential for those working on the ‘YPS agenda’ or, more generally, anyone who cares about the well-being and practical peace work of young people around the world.
Conclusion
With the multilateral system under strain and questions about the efficacy of international agendas on many people’s lips, we must not be complacent about hard-won progress to date on expanding youth inclusion and spaces for youth leadership in peace and security. We know that despite the polycrisis facing us all at present, young people are still persistently leading in frontline crisis responses and more sustained peacebuilding efforts. There is an opportunity for decision-makers and global leaders to work with and for young people and our collective future. With attention to critical questions to move us past work avoidance, meaningful progress on the aims of the YPS agenda can be made, and we can ensure they are not simply empty and costly promises–for youth, for all of us who share this earth, and for a hope for peace and justice.
Co-Authored by:
Khaled Emam is a human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of Justice Call; He currently serves as a Teaching Assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a researcher at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Khaled’s work focuses on “Making Justice Work” by building networks and coalitions that foster constructive dialogue and action, advocating for a region where all people enjoy dignity and the freedom to exercise their human rights.
Helen Berents is a feminist scholar interested in youth leadership for peace, everyday experiences of conflict and peacebuilding; and local-global relations in peace and security governance, and has been researching the YPS agenda since its inception. Helen is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Australia, and has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland.