The importance of engaging with youth as part of efforts to maintain peace and security was mandated in 2015 by UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS).[1] In countries affected by armed conflict, youth comprise a significant yet heterogeneous portion of the population. Young people play a wide range of different and changing roles in conflict and peacebuilding. They can be peacebuilders and community leaders, while youth groups are often a source of resilience in any community. But they also account for many of those affected by conflict, not least as refugees and IDPs.

Conflict may have disrupted their access to education and economic opportunities, increasing their vulnerability. Overlooking the rights and situation of young people can risk stoking grievances and make them an accessible demographic for armed groups, particularly if offering economic opportunities to provide for their future.

Despite these factors, youth are often excluded when it comes to engaging in discussions and decision making about peace and security, and underrepresented in formal political structures, including peace processes. The narrative around young people in conflict tends to stereotype and characterize them as either victims or perpetrators, strongly reinforced by gender norms (young female victims and young male fighters), with little recognition of their agency, unique perspectives and positive contribution to peace. However, young people’s understandings of their local realities – and therefore of conflict dynamics and structural causes – can provide unique and valuable insights during the situational awareness phase of a mission, or in a conflict analysis process. Young people also often make up the majority of the electorate, which means that there are demographic incentives for the host government to listen to them and to value their engagement.

Peace operations have a number of different mechanisms for engaging with young people and supporting their participation in society.

Engaging young people can involve mobilizing funding support to ensure that they are able to achieve agency and leadership, build networks and organize themselves. Through the work of different mission sections – including Civil Affairs, Political Affairs, Strategic Communications, and Community Policing – missions can foster these dialogues with the host authorities as well as civil society.

6.3.1 Operational activities

The key operational activities to support this output include:

  • Ensuring a youth perspective, and young people’s participation, in peace and conflict analysis processes.
  • Mainstreaming a youth perspective in programme design, implementation and evaluation, and establishing inclusive mechanisms to enable meaningful youth participation in these processes, as well as in political forums within the host country.
  • Establishing structured and systematic formal mechanisms to engage with youth, bringing together the mission, the UNCT and civil society.
  • Enhancing institutional capacity by appointing a youth adviser in the mission and employing a network of youth focal points.
  • Include training and briefings for mission and UNCT senior leadership, as well as civilian, police and military staff.

6.3.2 Benchmarks

Short-term

  • Mapping exercise and youth needs assessment undertaken by mission and UNCT counterparts, together with young people.
  • Key actors identified to foster youth engagement in peacebuilding activities.
  • DDR programmes developed to support youth-specific needs.

Medium-term

  • YPS is included in mission mandates, budgets and reports to the UN Security Council.
  • A strategic YPS Agenda roadmap is developed to facilitate coordination between mission, UNCT and other actors.
  • Institutional capacity is ensured through a mission youth advisor and a youth focal-point system.
  • Structured and systematic mechanisms established for consultation between the mission, UNCT and young people.
  • Youth groups are involved in collaborating and partnering with the mission on peace and conflict analyses and early warning, and developing sustainable options for peace and reconciliation, in line with “do no harm” principles.
  • Agreement among the donor community reached to avoid overlapping priorities and actions.

Long-term

  • National and international policies and responses are better integrated with long-term development frameworks that include youth organizations.
  • Meaningful input into the political process established from a diverse range of youth actors.

6.3.3 Responsibilities and coordination

Engagement with youth is undertaken by a number of mission sections. However, caution and special considerations must be observed with respect to military and police components when engaging with youth. Responsibility for youth programmes is likely to rest with the host government, the UNCT and NGOs on the ground. In particular, entities such as the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), UNDP, the UN Population Fund and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) may be involved in supporting longer-term programming on the ground. The mission can support these activities and should factor them into planning at the inception of the mission.

The mission can also play a critical role in supporting the growth of – and, to a limited extent, kick-starting – the engagement of youth in post-conflict settings, through sections such as Civil Affairs, Political Affairs, Human Rights, Community Policing, Rule of Law, Gender, and Strategic Communications.

6.3.4 Resources

Despite its importance, youth participation is rarely planned and budgeted for in a mission’s design phase. Activities to support engagement with young people are therefore likely to require additional donor support. This is not necessarily the responsibility of the peace operation but the MLT team can play a role in engaging with other partners to support these initiatives in fulfilment of the overall objectives of the mandate and building a more sustainable peace. In addition to programming, human resources are required to ensure a peace operation’s institutional capacity to mainstream YPS, including training and staff resources such as a mission youth adviser, as well as partnerships that can be forged to support these efforts.

6.3.5 Challenges and risks

  • Ill-informed assumptions stereotyping young people as victims, disengaged or perpetrators of violence and social unrest in the country.
  • The common mistake of programming for but not with young people, seeing youth only as recipients of a programme rather than as partners in its design, planning, delivery and evaluation.
  • The elites and political class may be reluctant to engage with youth, valuing experience in numbers of years over their rights, knowledge and unique perspectives.
  • Conflict may have limited the ability of young people to receive education and training, thus also limiting their options for engagement.
  • Youth are not a homogeneous group so efforts must be made to engage with a diverse range of young people, not just those in a position of privilege, and to seek their input and perspectives.
  • Youth often carry the burden of social and economic insecurity, and may be excluded from employment and formal political processes due to lack of resources.
  • Instrumentalization and tokenism of young people by institutions, taking advantage of a youth group to serve a political objective.

6.3.6 Considerations

Youth engagement in political processes takes many forms and some may be in tension with each other

Young people are likely to be excluded from formal political processes and mechanisms. They may, however, have established other grassroots initiatives in the community to facilitate civic engagement. The MLT will need to identify how to engage with and navigate these organizations, along with the host government. Young people’s own initiatives and organizations are often a source of community resilience. It is therefore important to consider building on, and partnering with, these initiatives, before creating new projects and programmes.

Youth, peace and security and other agendas

Although there are similarities between the YPS Agenda and the WPS Agenda, they require different approaches, as they address different power structures and forms of exclusion. Common approaches taken to women’s peace and security or gender cannot therefore simply be templated. Furthermore, youth is not synonymous with “young men” any more than “gender” is synonymous with women. Youth, peace and security intersects with a number of other agendas, including the overarching 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as efforts to counter violent extremism and DDR efforts. It is important to understand how these agendas relate to one another when operationalized, to benefit from synergies rather than trade-offs in their implementation.

  1. UN Security Council Resolution 2250 defines youth as anyone aged between 18 and 29. However, there are variances at the national level, and different UN entities and regional organizations use various age definitions. Subsequent UN resolutions on YPS include UN General Assembly Resolution 70/262 (2016) and UN Security Council resolutions 2282 (2016) and 2419 (2018). ↵

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Considerations for Mission Leadership in United Nations Peace Operations Copyright © 2021 by International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations. All Rights Reserved.

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