Youth and Peace Processes: Who’s in the Room?
Watch the webinar below to learn how youth are shifting entrenched local systems.
Youth play a vital role as agents of change on the frontlines of systems strengthening. In this webinar, the Youth Systems Strengthening Community of Practice (CoP) brought together practitioners to discuss actions young people are taking to influence systems of policy-making and framework creation that make peace and security processes more inclusive.
In this session, presenters discussed actions young people are taking now to make peace and security processes more inclusive on the local, national, and global levels. Young people from South Sudan and Cameroon shared their experiences in tackling entrenched local systems.
The youth speakers were:
- Alakiir Chol, a 19-year-old South Sudanese youth leader supporting the Youth Talk project in South Sudan. She is a fierce leader and advocate for women's rights working on gender-based violence prevention, educating students about sexual harassment and forced marriages, and producing radio shows to talk about critical social issues.
- Achaleke Christian Leke, an international development, peacebuilding, and violent extremism expert with 15 years of experience working as a practitioner, researcher, and academic, born and raised in Cameroon. He is the executive director of Local Youth Corner Cameroon. He was recently appointed by the African Union's Peace and Security Commission to be a Youth Peace Ambassador for Central Africa region.
Search for Common Ground has been co-leading advocacy to improve youth inclusion in peace and security processes and spaces for over a decade. Search will also provide an overview of the pathway toward systems change that the Global Coalition on Youth, Peace, and Security has mapped for the coming years.
Presented by USAID's YouthPower 2: Learning and Evaluation Activity, the Youth Systems Strengthening Community of Practice (CoP) serves youth, practitioners in youth-serving organizations, and policymakers.