This article was updated with content between Tuesday 31 October and Thursday 2 November. Vlogs have been created by our Youth Ambassadors, and this article tells the story of the event - giving you insight into a Wilton Park dialogue.
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Youth as Peacemakers
Young people make up a third of those affected by conflict. More than 600 million young people live in fragile or conflict affected areas.
Unable to work and often traumatised, many of these young people may see joining an armed group or leaving their country altogether as the only choices open to them.
Yet many young people are not choosing violence to address their grievances and are actively contributing to peacemaking and peacebuilding. This dialogue will examine how their actions can be supported and strengthened.
Day summaries
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
The Youth Dialogues
The Wilton Park Youth Dialogues are be a series of events being held throughout 2017 and 2018 with a specific focus on the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The dialogues are bringing together young people, government and non-governmental organisations, civil society, academics, educationalists and business leaders, for honest, inclusive conversations about young people and their role in addressing local, regional and global challenges.
They are providing a forum to discuss the effectiveness of existing policy approaches and will explore what new approaches are needed in order to co-create a more peaceful and prosperous world.
Explore the first event here:
The Youth Ambassador blogs
Six things we learnt about peacebuilding - Haider Ali
Haidar Ali works for the British Council and is a programme manager posted in Amman, Jordan, supporting the Youth Strategy for the MENA region. He was one the of the youth ambassadors reporting some of the main findings from the Youth Dialogue series. Haidar is also on the British Council Future Leaders programme which has taken him to India as project manager in Delhi and Head of British Council in Hyderabad.
One in six people on the planet is aged 15–24 years old with the median age of the world at 29.6 years old. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, 60 per cent of the population is under 30 years old known in demographic terms as a 'youth bulge'. These young people also make up around 30 per cent of the unemployed. A frustrated youth population without opportunities can make challenging problems in the region more volatile. In 2015, all UN member states signed up to a Security Resolution (UNSCR 2250) on Youth, Peace and Security, which gives young people a bigger mandate to be peacebuilders. How can we put this mandate into practice?
We believe that the first step is to have a conversation with young people in the region. On 16–18 October in Jordan, Wilton Park, an executive agency of Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the British Council, held the second in a series of Youth Dialogues with 60 prominent young people from the MENA region, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), practitioners and policy makers for an open and inclusive conversation on young people. This is what we learnt.
1 – What drives some young people to become foreign fighters?
A word often used was 'waithood' - a prolonged period of adolescence typified by waiting for employment, marriage and adult responsibilities. In fact, research by the United Nations into foreign fighters suggests that difficulty in getting married in their home countries is a motivating factor which drives some young people into violence and conflict.
2 – Employment and skills are not silver bullets
The World Bank invested $300 million into employment and economic opportunities in Jordan in 2016 but this has not reduced the number young people engaging in violence and conflict. Issues such as identity, purpose and a sense of belonging are likely to contribute towards whether young people choose to live peacefully or not.
3 – Social media is a globalising force – with limits
Like the rest of the world, young people in MENA are growing up with social media. It exposes them to global ideas and they are inspired to be part of the world beyond their immediate surroundings. However, they have few opportunities to travel – even within their own countries. This creates an expectation gap between aspiration and reality. What is now needed are opportunities for young people from different regions, backgrounds and ideologies to come together to build trust and lasting connections.
4 – Being peaceful is cost effective
While in some circles conflict is seen as lucrative, at the event we spoke about peace from an economic perspective. Conflict costs are estimated at $13.6 trillion a year – 13.3 per cent of world GDP compared to the commitment by some countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to contribute 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) to official development assistance (ODA). You could say that for every dollar spent on peacebuilding, we save $16 on violent conflict.
5 – Young people overwhelmingly peaceful
Across the world, it is a very small minority who engage in conflict, so why do young people instead choose to be peaceful. This is about changing young people's narratives from one of challenge to one of opportunity. Young people can be powerful forces of social action and peacebuilding. For example, more than 200,000 Active Citizens across the globe have contributed positively to their communities and society so far. We need to understand what leads these choices.
6 – Let’s be innovative when engaging young people as peacemakers
We don’t need to rely on workshops alone. During the event, an example was given by the Department for International Development (DFID). Through UK Aid, an NGO called MARCH was able to bring together 100 young men and women to audition for a play which would take a local adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. This brought together youths from divided communities in Tripoli, Lebanon, who would then maintain their connections and renovate 140 shops in their local community and open a Café. Another example given was a comic book artist who published comics providing alternative, positive models of heroism: super-heroes instead of Jihadis. Providing an alternative narrative to extremism is crucial when 'terrorism is packaged as heroism’.
One of the most innovative and effective ways we can promote peace is through the Arts – and this is an area the British Council is well-placed to explore.
This article was first published on 31 October 2017 in The Bulletin, the British Council's internal publication.
