National Mechanisms for Youth Inclusion in Peacebuilding

A Q&A with Emma Bapt, previously a Research Fellow at UNU-CPR, and now a research consultant at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

🎧 Listen to this Q&A with Emma Bapt here.

How can National Youth Councils, National Action Plans on Youth, Peace and Security, and national coalition building link local and national efforts?

National Youth Councils, parliaments and any other national youth representative body are often seen as the highest representation of young people's voices and perspectives, and they often have a large presence and connections across the country. So those bodies can really help amplify young people's voices and concerns.

They can expand young people's engagement at a national level, particularly with formal political stakeholders and they can help institutionalize those voices within the national conversation, while also supporting local peacebuilding and conflict prevention efforts. A couple of projects in this cohort directly strengthened or worked with National Youth Councils in parliaments. 

In The Gambia, for example, where my colleague Luisa and I traveled last June, a 2018 project strengthened the National Youth Parliament, so bringing together 172 youth organizations to increase youth visibility and to facilitate their input in national decision making. The project actually, interestingly, helped establish a Children's National Assembly to provide a conduit for under 18 year olds to become more involved at the national level.

We found this similarly in other projects in Guinea. A project supported the establishment of a National Youth Council, which positioned youth to engage in national conversations really in ways that hadn't been possible in the previous decade. We saw other projects support the development of National Action Plans on YPS, things like YPS coalitions or youth consultations and input into these action plans or other national policies, in South Sudan.

A project facilitated nationwide consultations with youth organizations to include youth voices and perspectives in the elaboration of a national youth strategy, which at the time of the research was in the midst of being validated and approved by the parliament. Another example is the project in Guinea, where consultative processes were convened to both revise the existing national youth policy, where they call and develop a roadmap for a future National Action Plan on YPS.

So how can national mechanisms and platforms avoid the risk of tokenism and meaningfully include youth?  

National Youth Councils' mechanisms and platforms, they are valuable for amplifying youth voices, but as you say, they can sometimes become tokenistic, politicized and sometimes lack meaningful inclusion of youth if disconnected from local realities. And so to avoid things like tokenism, these mechanisms and platforms must be participatory, inclusive and linked to local efforts.

Some of the learning that came out from the project in Guinea pointed to particular attention that was paid to meaningful youth representation and what it would actually mean for the credibility of the National Youth Council. For example, to select members of the Guinea National Youth Council, an election model that was developed by a previous PBF-supported project was actually expanded to all 33 prefectures and 6 other regions of Guinea, which helped generate multiple levels of youth representation.

Really interestingly, the project also supported a YPS coalition that was made up of youth representatives, civil society, youth organizations, but also some governmental  actors to serve as an oversight body to ensure that the proposed roadmap for a national action plan on YPS was going to be taken forward and to ensure that young people's input were to shape national policies and commitments.

Other sustainability challenges that come up for national youth representative bodies? One of them is financial sustainability. One striking example in The Gambia, that came from both project documents and interviews with stakeholders that were involved in the Youth Parliament flag that actually limited funding opportunities were most likely to be factors in the Parliament.

In your field research, how important did you notice youth participation was at the local level for gaining traction at the national level?

A key question that we looked at in this cohort was actually exactly that, the importance of how local programming links to national programming when it comes to youth. And a key lesson that emerged was the idea that, gaining traction on youth participation at a national level very much depends on establishing that local base and establishing a strong local foundation for youth participation. 

First, the projects show that scaling up youth participation requires building from a strong local foundation, and that investments in networks, institutions, youth-led organizations at a local level can really create that solid baseline that national or cross border programming even can build from.

In Sudan, for example, the establishment of a national youth monitoring network known as the Youth Citizen Observer Network, or YON, was actually made possible by a strong foundation of youth-led organizations across the country's 18 states. That was developed prior to the project that was examined, prior to the programming by the implementing partner, the CARTO sensor, which had built and worked on these relationships with youth groups and garnered support from government authorities over several years, which really allowed the creation of a national network with wide reaching and very much of an ongoing impact.

The Sudan project slightly linked to this question, but going beyond is also I think, a key example of the benefits that can emerge from including youth in peace and security processes. So why can't initially supported youth participation in the post 2020 Juba peace agreement transition. 

But when conflict broke out in 2023, during the implementation of the project, the project actually really successfully adapted and allowed youth to monitor local ceasefires, humanitarian issues and the war's impacts over time, which really demonstrated the power of youth involvement in conflict monitoring and mitigation with this wide ranging network providing a broader national voice for youth built up from the ground.

How did you observe regional or cross-border youth projects benefiting from building on youth empowerment and inclusion projects at the local and national level?

So a strong example is of youth serving as connectors between local and national levels of governance. And there are several in the cohort, but it was really a project in Sri Lanka, where implementing partners selected youth parliamentarians from the National Youth Services Council, as well as young aspiring leaders beyond this body to participate in capacity-building programs on a wide range of issues from peace building to socioeconomic issues. 

And really empowering them to return to their communities, to produce community-based action plans that would address those issues at the community level. So in this sense, the Youth Parliamentarians really played this connecting role between local and national levels of governance with health being used as a real entry point for youth participation and community social cohesion.

In the context of COVID-19, which was the context in which the project was implemented, that setup served as a training ground for these young leaders to really gain visibility not only in their communities, but in local political parties, so linking local and national political landscapes and boosting youth participation in local governance.

Just a little add on here is that this points to a broader finding, that looks at how a strong local foundation can help support national youth participation, but that sustaining those local ties and engagement is really important and actually gives resonance to national YPS initiatives.

Finally, what were the three interlinked challenges that the cross border or regional projects faced?

The most notable challenges observed in the project sample for this cohort were identified within cross border and regional product projects. Three of those stood out in particular first cross border and regional projects. Space complexity and coordination issues. Coordinating projects across multiple countries and organizations is difficult at best and nearly impossible in some other cases.

It requires time, resources and is often difficult to maintain full engagement across multiple stakeholders as well. A project in Cameroon, for example, between Cameroon, Chad, a common initiative across countries at different stages of the conflict management spectrum, which pose initial challenges, both in terms of conceptualization and operation.

Those challenges were obviously further accentuated when coordinating with external stakeholder stakeholders. Another challenge we saw in cross border and regional programming was a lack of sync or clear connection with the project's theory of change, theories of change in several cases. The rationale for youth empowerment initiatives across countries was actually pretty unclear, such as in some of the projects we looked at in the Western Central Africa region where cross border activities often came closer to add-on features rather than core components to the project. 

A project examined in the Western Balkans, however, in the flip side of that argument was found to have a very strong link between its rationale and regional operating model. The initiative looked to foster reconciliation across six Balkan entities by strengthening the regional youth cooperation office.

Facilitating cross board exchanges and supporting youth groups in peace building the project's theory of change in this particular case was really well aligned with regional peace building goals and really its success was seen as a game changer for engaging youth in peace building. So there are positive and negatives to cross border and regional programming, and those are the challenges that stood out.

Thanks, Emma. Anything else to share?

The importance of having a strong local foundation, mentioned before, applied to national projects, but also to some of the cross border or regional projects in this cohort. These appeared more likely to be able to develop strong regional platforms when they could actually build from youth empowerment and inclusion initiatives at a local and national level. 

The Western Balkans project mentioned was viewed as highly successful in building bridges in the region beforehand through youth exchanges and empowerment activities. But that's exactly what it's was also criticized for, is that those that were involved, mentioned that it could have been even stronger if it had.

Connected youth at a community level before or in combination with regional youth exchanges, especially among highly diverse contexts, such as in Bosnian, her in the Gabon, Chad Cameroon project. Mentioned there was also some learning there. Its main objective was to create a network of young conflict prevention actors across three countries.

Particularly for the prevention of illicit trafficking in cross border areas, but the regional organization in charge of coordinating this network, which is what it was called, actually argued that we must first emphasize the participation of young people at the local level. And that I quote, if the micro or local level works, it can then evolve at the national level.

So really that similar learning from national projects coming through cross border and regional programming as well.

Thanks for listening to that Q&A with Emma Bapt on her field research as part of the 2025 Peacebuilding Fund Thematic review on Youth, Peace and Security.