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Youth are amongst the most affected by the pressing matters of our world, such as climate change, sustainable development or conflict prevention, the subject of this article. They must be engaged in these issues because the future belongs to them. At the same time, young people are often painted with adjectives like spoiled, inexperienced, apathetic or self-centered. The International Day of Youth (12 August), celebrated with an event at the UN Headquarters in New York on 11 August, saw a wide range of young leaders who would silence anyone tagging youth with those adjectives.
The United Nations Headquarters in New York celebrated the International Youth Day (12 August) with an event on Friday 11 August. The theme was Youth Building Peace, where many inspiring young leaders shared personal stories on how they became peacebuilders. This is the second part of an article that features an account of the event. Here we explain the stories of these young peacebuilders in more detail.
Taya Carneiro
Brazil is living through a worrying epidemic of anti-LGBT violence. As a child living in the outskirts of Brasilia, Taya Carneiro suffered this kind of violence, up to the point that she thought about leaving the country. Ultimately, though, she decided to stay and become a changemaker.
Noticing that violence and discrimination due to sex, gender or race was a neglected topic in Brazil’s political agenda, Taya founded Corpolitica, an organisation that empowers young victims of this type of discrimination. At the core of her initiative lays the following foundation: everyone is a student and a teacher at the same time, as everybody can learn something from each other.
“I started to occupy the decision-making spaces to fight the violence that I lived”, said Taya speaking to a packed room at UN Headquarters. According to Taya, she started to fight for young people, which are often “forgotten by public policies and very vulnerable to violence”.
With the knowledge acquired, Taya went on to found the Libertarian Union of Trans Women (ULTRA), an initiative that works with other several organisations to promote the rights of transgender people and protect them from the violence and discrimination they face in Brazil. As she puts it, "empowerment has enabled us to act to change our violent reality."
Julián David Rodríguez Sastoque
Julián David Rodríguez Sastoque is the Colombian representative of Youth For SDGs, an organization that works to share the commitment to the SDGs. Julian knows first-hand the link between a peaceful society and development — his country Colombia has been striving to put an end to an armed conflict with the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish).
Acutely aware that peace comes first, Julián created an initiative to foster a peaceful environment that would ease the difficult peace process in his native Colombia: PAZa la Página. Young people should be engaged in resolving this conflict, believes Julián, since they tend to be among those most affected by terrorism.
“My key message is that we need to understand that peace in Colombia goes beyond the peace agreement. It needs to be addressed in different ways. We need to overcome many obstacles. It is a great challenge, but youth in Colombia are interested in doing it”, said Julián.
Leading by example, Julián thinks that youth should be allowed to participate in decision-making spheres in Colombia. His activism to promote the SDGs and his efforts to bring peace to his country have earned him the “National Youth Volunteerism Award, Category: Sustainable Development” and the “Victory Award 2017”.
Moshin Mohi-Ud-Din
Moshin Mohi-Ud-Din is a staunch believer in communication and storytelling. These are, he thinks, the most powerful tools to bring about change. He is also in favour of making every minute of your life count. How else would he know that the average person has 9 to 10 million breaths to live?
Moshin has spent a great deal of breaths in his organisation, #MeWeSyria, a civic engagement program for supporting peer-to-peer healing, countering violent extremism, and non-violent forms of communication targeting young Syrian children.
“The second a young person is forced to be a refugee - displaced not by choice, but by force - these people lose control of their identity”, says Moshin, who also thinks that collaborative storytelling can give Syrian refugees skills and resilience.
The #MeWe initiative existed long before targeting Syrians. Moshin started it in Morocco where he taught at-risk youth living in the streets skills like empathy, creative collaboration and leadership.
A full-bright scholar, Moshin also spends many breaths working as Director of
Storytelling Innovation for Ashoka's Youth Venture, where he thinks of new ways to sync storytelling and community-building to continue fostering changemakers.
Recently, #MeWeSyria gained him recognition as a ‘Solver’ by the United Nations MiT’s Solve community. Moshin’s work has been the subject of media attention, having been featured in outlets like Vice, the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera.
Yasmine Arrington
At UNHQ’s celebration of International Youth Day, Yasmine Arrington urged all attendees to look around and find what they are not happy about. “Look into the communities, the schools... What needs improvement?” In her particular case, the issue was mass incarceration. According to the research she did herself, around 2 million youth in the US have a parent in prison. She had been one of them.
Youth with incarcerated parents have a significant chance of ending up in prison themselves. That is why Yasmine created ScholarCHIPS, a scholarship fund specifically for this demographic. The idea struck her while browsing scholarships for her studies. She realised that there were no scholarships for young people who have incarcerated parents.
“Our accomplishment is that we break this intergenerational cycle of incarceration and poverty”, said Yasmine at the United Nations. Like many of the other speakers during International Youth Day, she struggled to be taken seriously by adults when she was searching for donors to finance ScholarCHIPS.
Yasmine wants for others what she managed to achieve for herself. Despite coming from a disadvantaged household, she graduated from Elon University with a
Bachelor of Arts in Strategic Communications and History, while finding time to create and promote ScholarCHIPS.
Emilia Hannuksela
As a member of the UN Youth Organisation of Finland, Emilia Hannuksela could not stand idly by when in 2015 more than 30.000 refugees went to Finland to claim asylum. As an advocate of Resolution 2050 on Youth Peace and Security, Emilia felt that she needed to build bridges between the local youth and the young refugees. Out of the 30.000 refugees, 8.500 were minors, some unaccompanied.
Emilia highlighted that some of the challenges asylum seekers face when integrating into Finnish society come from the discrimination, racism and hate speech expressed by some locals. She explained how the UN Youth Organisation of Finland organised workshops on the SDGs for these young refugees, an opportunity to bring together locals and newcomers.
“I personally think that as a first step to make the situation better we should try to abolish the negative stereotype that people in the country have about refugees that need our support. We have to increase cultural understanding. Here is where youth organisations can chip in. We have had a strong role in building bridges between native youth and young refugees that came to our country”, said Emilia.
Emilia established a link between her efforts in integrating refugees and the values of Resolution 2050. According to the young Finn, inclusiveness is a prerequisite to a peaceful society and thus it is important to guarantee equal opportunities for all youth to participate. That is a key aspect of Resolution 2050 and it is as important in unstable places of the world as it is in peaceful countries like Finland.
Emilia is a human rights advocate who works as an associate expert at the Finnish Human Rights Centre and has extensive experience volunteering for UNICEF and Amnesty International. Together with the team at the UN Youth Organisation in Finland, she created a network on youth peace and security to bring together other youth organisations and young people interested in fostering a more inclusive society. It is a prime example of how one can increase opportunities for youth to participate in decision-making spheres from civil society.
- For more information on DSPD’s work on youth, please click here.
Source: UNSDN