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Session Submission Summary

Education, youth, peace and security - lessons from the “The Missing Peace: Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security.”

Tue, April 16, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Pacific Concourse (Level -1), Pacific O

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Facilitator (TBD): Cécile Mazzacurati, Peacebuilding Support Office, Secretariat, Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security, UNFPA / PBSO

Discussant (TBD): Elizabeth King/Tom Hill (New York University)

Around the world, young women and men are working, often despite immense challenges they face, to prevent violence and to contribute to peaceful resilient development. Realizing potential of 1.8 billion young people globally is central to the achievement of the interconnected goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development across key dimensions - inclusive social and development, peace and security, and environmental sustainability. Yet, the diverse contributions, perspectives and potential of young women and men, they are rarely acknowledged and meaningfully supported for their role in fostering sustainable development. On the contrary, perspectives of youth are distorted by harmful stereotypes that associate young people with violence, crime and instability. The negative stereotypes that picture large young populations as a problem to be solved translate into policy panics such as the youth bulge, youth migration and violent extremism and deepen marginalization and stigmatization of young people. These policy panics then translate in narrow policy and programmatic approaches – across education, protection, employment and civic and political engagement domains – that fail to support the agency and leadership of young people for building peaceful resilient societies (UNFPA, 2018).

Recognizing the critical role of young people, in December 2015, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS), the first resolution fully dedicated to the important and positive role young women and men play in the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security. Resolution 2250 requested the Secretary-General of the United Nations to carry out an independent progress study “on the youth’s positive contribution to peace processes and conflict resolution, in order to recommend effective responses at local, national, regional and international levels” (UNSC 2250).

The progress study entitled “The Missing Peace: Independent Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security”, developed over the last two years (2016-2018) through an inclusive and participatory process, is an independent study produced by a diverse advisory group of experts, young leaders and researchers across all regions. The study builds on perspectives and contributions made by young people themselves and includes analysis of youth-led initiatives across all regions, including through a survey of 399 of youth peacebuilding organizations (UNFPA, 2018). It provides insight on the wider preventive role of youth in building and sustaining peace that has been inadequately understood or invisible, as much of research on youth participation in peacebuilding focusses on young people’s agency in conflict and post-conflict settings (Schwartz, 2010; Del Felice and Ruud, 2016).

The study: (1) reflects on stereotypical conceptions of youth, and debunks policy myths that have misguided policy and programmatic approaches related to youth, violence and conflict, (2) captures young people’s perspectives on peace and security, and documents the breadth and diversity of their contributions to sustaining peace and preventing violence; (3) explores the social contract between young people and their governments and communities, reflecting on the experiences and dangers of excluding youth, and the alternatives for meaningful social, political and economic inclusion, (4) provides recommendations and a framework for partnering with, and investing in, young people to promote their inclusion and prevent violence – the core strategy for implementing the YPS agenda.

In particular, the study provides rich analysis of education and youth, peace and security as education featured universally as a core peace and security concern for young people across all the consultations undertaken for the study – ‘whether as an object of grievance and frustration, or as the embodiment of young people’s aspirations and hopes; whether as a place of social cohesion and belonging, or as an experience of fracture and exclusion’ (UNFPA, 2018).

Indeed, education emerges in the study as a site of struggle and ideologically and politically contested space. For young people, education is a key concern and interest but oriented very differently to some of the prevailing assumptions. One of the impacts of policy panic around drivers of violent extremism is to unhelpfully instrumentalize education in relation to violence or violence prevention based on unfounded assumptions that deficits in education lead to recruitment into violent extremist groups. Further, the study challenges the assumption that economic logic determines the interest of young people and families in education (King, 2018) and highlights that positioning education as a pacification strategy to prevent youth engagement in violence risks feeding into the narrative that positions young people as a problem (Santos and Novelli, 2017, UNFPA, 2018). A range of formal and non-formal education interventions indeed can impact positively or negatively the agency of girls and boys, young women and men and thus enable or restrict young people’s ability and to contribute to processes of prevention of violent conflict and sustaining peace either in political, socio-cultural or economic ways (Lopes Cardozo et al 2016). It is therefore critical that education practitioners, scholars and activists partner with young people to critique existing paradigms, seek better understanding of youth experiences and perspectives on education, and advocate for policies and practices that will support youth agency for peaceful, sustainable development.

Purpose: This panel draws on and embodies the rich research that underpins the Missing Peace Progress Study. It brings together a mix of youth leaders, scholars and practitioners that have both shaped and led youth, peace and security work.

The objectives of the panel are to:
1. Introduce the participatory inclusive methodology undertaken for the study and its key findings,
2. Examine the role of education within the broader task of ‘addressing’ violence of exclusion of young people,
3. Provide analysis and reflection of existing youth education for peacebuilding programs, and
4. Share youth-lead peacebuilding work in specific countries.

Sub Unit

Individual Presentations