Resources on: Youth in Peace Building and Conflict Management
Documents and articles
Search for Common Ground in West Africa – Regional Youth Strategy
West Africa is currently grappling with a crisis among its youth, brought on by years of war, unemployment and marginalisation. Over the past two decades, youth have been at the core of armed conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, both as victims and as perpetrators. In each instance, national conflicts took on regional components, with combatants from neighbouring countries being recruited across porous borders to fight alongside indigenous fighters. Commanders and warlords recruited these combatants both domestically and regionally, attracting them with assurances of payment and the chance to loot with abandon.
Rights, Root Causes and Recruitment: The youth factor in Africa’s armed conflicts
Where would war makers be without youth? The co-option of the energy and devotion of young people for the personal advancement of a few military elites in situations of personal insecurity is the single greatest reason for the pejorative connotations associated with the category of ‘youth’ in Africa today.
West Africa: Youth, Poverty and Blood
The lives of “regional warriors” are documented in this 66-page report. Based on interviews with some 60 former fighters who have crossed borders to fight in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, the report explores the forces driving the phenomenon of cross-border mercenary activity in West Africa.
Youth, Poverty and Blood: The Lethal Legacy of West Africa’s Regional Warriors (Human Rights Watch)
Since the late 1980’s, the armed conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire have reverberated across each country’s porous borders. Gliding back and forth across these borders is a migrant population of young fighters – regional warriors – who view war as mainly an economic opportunity. Their military ‘careers’ most often began when they were abducted and forcibly recruited by rebels in Liberia or Sierra Leone, usually as children.
Links
Africa Leadership Initiative
There is a crisis of leadership in Africa. The result is ontinued poverty for millions of men, women and children. The causes of this crisis are numerous. But high among them is the fact that many African countries lack a broadly shared vision of the future that effectively melds the demands of globalization with local values.
African Youth Parliament
The African Youth Parliament (AYP) is a continental network of young leaders, peace builders and social activists from 50 African countries working in promoting and advocating for youthful solutions to Africa 's developmental challenges. Launched at the historic AYP2003 convened in Nairobi , Kenya , AYP is an initiative of the African Action Partners to the International Youth Parliament in 2000 whose vision was peaceful, equitable and sustainable Africa .
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
The American Friends Service Committee carries out service, development, social justice, and peace programs throughout the world. Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC's work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions, and cultures.
Center for the International Study of Youth and Political Violence
The Center for the International Study of Youth and Political Violence (the Center) was established in 2005 with the aim of becoming an authoritative source and training agent for the potential joint role of scholarship, programming, practice, and policy in serving the needs of adolescents involved in political violence around the world.
Child Soldiers Project
Children, on account of their special vulnerability are the most seriously affected. This stands to justify the ever increasing attention that the subject of child combatants or child soldiers is now given in many countries of the world. It is relevant to raise awareness of the plight of children used as soldiers and to galvanize government , local and international NGOs and civil society efforts to protect children affected by armed conflict.
Connecting Africa’s Youth Leaders
More than 200 youth leaders from across the African continent attended the event, as did participants from previous regional UN Youth Leadership Summits in the Asia and Pacific, Latin America, and Caribbean regions. The regional summit series will lead to a Global Youth Leadership Summit at United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York in August 2006.
Global Voices: The world is talking. Are you listening?
Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project, sponsored by and launched from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.
PeaceAfrica: Supporting Africa’s Peace Builders
PeaceAfrica is a digital commons project of the AllAfrica Foundation, funded by the Ford Foundation's Special Initiative for Africa (SIA). The web channel, hosted by allAfrica.com, is meant to become an interactive Internet platform, linking African organisations working in peace-building, conflict resolution and related fields into an online network. The peace community includes groups working in civil, legal and human rights, in institution-building at the regional level, in the fields of identity and citizenship and among constituencies such as the arts, labour, women, youth and media. In short, the project is dedicated to facilitating African leadership and partnerships for peace, in and among these many fields.
Rights, Root Causes and Recruitment: The youth factor in Africa’s armed conflicts
Where would war makers be without youth? The co-option of the energy and devotion of young people for the personal advancement of a few military elites in situations of personal insecurity is the single greatest reason for the pejorative connotations associated with the category of ‘youth’ in Africa today.
The 21st Century African Youth Movement
The 21st Century African Youth Movement is charitable organization that seeks to bring people and resources together to address social issues in Africa. AYM focuses on a couple of areas:
The first is organizing Africa’s youth initiatives to collectively pursue a culture of peace, justice and human rights in Africa.
Second, encouraging and fostering partnerships among Africa’s youth.
Third, Africa’s youth collaborating with youth from varied nationalities. Finally, African youth Participating in the affairs of their communities and vigorously supporting the vision of the African Union and the New Initiative for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
The 411 Initiative For Change
The 411 Initiative For Change is working to create a world in which all global citizens, and specifically young people, have a say and a role to play in their community, their country, and are active participants in all areas of society and at all levels.
The Center for the International Study of Youth and Political Violence (the Center) of the University of Tennessee
The Center for the International Study of Youth and Political Violence (the Center) was established in 2005 with the aim of becoming an authoritative source and training agent for the potential joint role of scholarship, programming, practice, and policy in serving the needs of adolescents involved in political violence around the world.
The Institute for the African Child
The children of Africa are the interdisciplinary focus of the Institute for the African Child at Ohio University. We seek to promote research, teaching, and service that consider children in the process of the African continennt’s socio-economic development. Children are Africa’s most marginalized population group and resource in need of the world’s attention.
The United Nations Global Youth Leadership Summit (GYLS)
GYLS seeks to strengthen the worldwide movement to engage young people in decisions about the future of their communities, regions, and our emerging global society. Young leaders, one young man and one young woman from the 192 United Nations member states, will meet in New York on 29 - 31 October 2006, to share ideas and actions plans on ways to reduce poverty and accelerate the achievement of the other Millennium Development Goals and build peace, with sport and culture as vehicles for reaching out to youth worldwide.
United Nations World Youth Report 2005: Overview of main findings and recommendations
United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY Peacebuilders)
The United Network of Young Peace builders (UNOY Peace builders) is a global network of young people and youth organisations active in the field of peace building. Our main areas of action are networking, training, empowerment for action/support to youth projects, campaigning and advocacy and practical research on the role of youth in peace building.
Youth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Annual Conference
This conference will focus on issues facing youth (12-24 years) in the MENA region, especially those related to their economic prospects and potentials. It is also intended to highlight their needs in urban areas, the characteristics of urban environments that suit them and the roles of urban authorities in tackling youth issues. The conference will also facilitate networking, sharing of experiences and best practices. Join Mobility International and the National Clearinghouse on Disability & Exchange in Morocco!
Youth, Gender & Civil Society Programme (YGCP)
The YGCP addresses issues related to the role of youth, women and civil society in enhancing peace and effective policymaking in Africa. It also interrogates the impact of conflict, poverty and marginalisation on these critical actors on the continent, focussing on issues that impede their equitable and meaningful participation in African and international social, political and economic activities.
Youth and the Global South: Religion, Politics and the Making of Youth in Africa, Asia and the Middle East
Dakar, Senegal, 13 - 15 October 2006
Convened by: African Studies Centre (ASC), Council for the Development of Social Science in Africa (CODESRIA), Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern world (ISIM), International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS).
The dramatic demographic shift towards the young in many countries of the global South, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, has led to important changes, which analysts are just beginning to understand. The ‘young generation’ has been assuming a central, though frequently ambiguous, position in many places in the global South. While political economies change and the processes of globalization continues relentlessly, young people have become both agent and subject in new, yet little understood ways in the interrelated spheres of religion, politics and culture.
West Africa: Youth, Poverty and Blood
The lives of “regional warriors” are documented in this 66-page report. Based on interviews with some 60 former fighters who have crossed borders to fight in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, the report explores the forces driving the phenomenon of cross-border mercenary activity in West Africa.
