This year marks 10 years of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda, established by the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2250 (2015) to ensure that young people are included in all parts of the peace and security continuum. Yet despite global progress, many young people – particularly youth with disabilities – remain excluded from decision-making and experience layered forms of discrimination that often remain invisible in mainstream programming.
Globally, the UN estimates that there are 180 to 220 million youth with disabilities, almost 80 percent of whom live in developing countries. They face numerous obstacles, including socio-cultural biases, increased exposure to violence and abuse and limited access to education, employment, health care and social services. They also face a persistent lack of political and civic participation opportunities. All of these are further heightened in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
UNU-CPR’s 2025 Peacebuilding Fund Thematic Review on Youth, Peace and Security, examined youth programming supported by the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) over the last five years to better understand how peacebuilding programming has advanced the YPS agenda. While the PBF is not the only source of funding for advancing the YPS agenda, it represents an important source for actioning YPS advancement as the UN’s largest conflict prevention and peacebuilding fund, and one with particular windows and targeting focused on youth inclusion. In addition, because each PBF project tends to be implemented by a number of other implementing partners, both UN entities and non-government or civil society organizations, the programming is fairly representative of larger trends in the peacebuilding field. The findings of the Review suggest that while the YPS agenda has helped elevate the role of youth in peacebuilding in many ways, without an intentional focus on disability inclusion, many young people continue to be excluded from spaces meant to represent them.
Gaps in disability inclusion in the YPS field
The Thematic Review examined the best practices, challenges and lessons learned from 41 youth-focussed projects supported by the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) across 33 countries and territories. The projects demonstrated a range of innovative approaches to advancing young people’s participation in the peacebuilding field. And yet a focus on disability inclusion was notably absent. Across multiple country contexts examined in the Review, young people with disabilities were repeatedly found to experience compounded forms of marginalization shaped by age, gender and other identity markers. One interlocutor working in Somalia recalled how young women with disabilities were even viewed as carrying “three curses” in the eyes of community members: their age, gender and disability. Still, the Review team found limited evidence in its analysis of PBF programming of projects taking into account these intersectional dynamics, especially in the context of ensuring better inclusion of girls with disabilities or tackling related societal stigma.
One interlocutor working in Somalia recalled how young women with disabilities were even viewed as carrying “three curses” in the eyes of community members: their age, gender and disability.
As part of the initial selection process for the 41 projects, the research team examined a much wider portion of the PBF-supported projects – some 153 projects implemented over the last five years. Of these 153 youth-focused projects, only a handful were designed with disability-specific components in mind. In fact, it proved difficult to identify projects with meaningful measures for inclusion and accommodation strategies at all.
This is not an issue specific to the PBF but reflects a larger gap in the field: despite being the world’s largest minority group, and with many living in conflict-affected contexts, persons with disabilities remain largely invisible in peacebuilding processes. Two larger trends are driving this lack of attention: First is a lack of full consideration of those with disabilities in the peacebuilding field, which has been strongly criticized in academic and policy literature. A lack of disaggregated data makes it hard to track just how big this gap is – peacebuilding projects rarely even track whether their programming is including or considering the views and participation of those with disabilities. Evidence, research or policy attention on youth with disabilities in conflict settings, particularly regarding their role in peace and security is even more scarce.
Second, the YPS field has been critiqued for not doing enough to ensure full inclusion of young people of all backgrounds, despite this always being a core part of the YPS pillars since UNSCR 2250, the founding YPS agenda resolution. The resolution itself made no explicit reference to youth with disabilities except for a general call for inclusion and for compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Although some of the subsequent YPS policy documents and resolutions since then have referenced disability inclusion more concretely, it remains perhaps the most overlooked or marginalized category of youth within the YPS sphere. In the course of the research, experts interviewed said that it is still rare to find YPS projects and activities that are fully disability-inclusive, much less that make it a central focus.
Interestingly, researchers on disability inclusion have pointed to the success of the YPS agenda in moving the needle for youth as a source of hope and lessons for disability inclusion (as well as partnership). Yet, greater attention must also be devoted to youth with disabilities within the YPS agenda itself and in related programming.
Addressing the current lack of inclusion within the YPS agenda requires a shift in mindset, incorporating considerations for youth with disabilities early in project conception and development, and also in overall institutional approaches to (youth) peacebuilding. But the review of PBF-supported projects suggests there are also some immediate practical steps that could be taken that might result in immediate, tangible dividends.
Recognizing and addressing intersectional exclusion
Although there were very few projects within the Thematic Review sample that focused on those with disabilities, there were notable exceptions, and even some that developed stronger disability inclusion practices over the course of the project. One project in Guinea-Bissau adopted an explicitly intersectional approach (for more on definitions and practice of intersectionality, see the cohort study on this that was part of the PBF Thematic Review). From the initial project design, it considered overlapping “identity risk factors”, including disability. A key motivation for the project, according to project staff, was the recognition that “young women with disabilities experience an even more increased discrimination due to the perception of their condition and the limits on omission of their rights as women/girls, thus rendering them invisible and underrepresented in the processes towards strengthened gender equality”.
'young women with disabilities experience an even more increased discrimination due to the perception of their condition and the limits on omission of their rights as women/girls, thus rendering them invisible and underrepresented in the processes towards strengthened gender equality.'
The project was intentionally designed to expand the base of youth participation working with youth organizations to include more diverse voices. Beyond ensuring accommodations for youth with disabilities, this also included bridging divides between rural and urban youth and reaching young people with lower levels of education and access. The project’s intersectional approach helped recognize those overlapping forms of exclusion and respond to them in practice. This is a lesson often underscored by disability experts but too rarely applied.
There were also other projects within the Review that actively sought to break cycles of exclusion. In Guinea and El Salvador, project staff partnered with local organizations led by or working closely with youth with disabilities, who were critical in facilitating outreach, ensuring accessibility and tailoring activities to the needs of participants. In Guinea, this enabled youth with disabilities to take part in the National Action Plan consultation on Youth, Peace and Security, thus broadening inclusivity and ensuring that diverse perspectives were genuinely represented, with the potential to shape future policy outcomes. In El Salvador, the partner organization acted as a bridge between the project and youth with disabilities, helping to adapt content and activities to make participation more accessible and meaningful.
In a Sri Lankan project focused on young women peacebuilders, organizers recruited a mentor proficient in sign language who could provide continuous support for a participant with a hearing impairment throughout the course of the project and not only during specific training activities. This participant later went on to establish her own organization which remains active to date. While it may be difficult to attribute this outcome solely to the one-on-one support she received, the example illustrates the profound and lasting impact that tailored, continuous support can have.
Other projects learned to adapt as they progressed. In a cross-border initiative in Burkina Faso and Mali, partners realized during implementation that youth with disabilities were absent from local conflict prevention mechanisms. They worked with the office of sustainable development in Mali to ensure youth with disabilities were included in these structures. In The Gambia, partners prepared for future projects by creating inclusivity checklists to preserve institutional memory and remind staff of accommodation options for diverse youth.
Gaps and lessons learned
Several post-project reviews and independent evaluations noted that inclusion could have been stronger with more funding, time and advance planning.
For instance, while the Guinea-Bissau project worked effectively with youth with visual impairments, it lacked accommodations for youth with hearing or cognitive disabilities. Similarly, in the El Salvador project noted above partners ensured accessible training materials and venues but found that the pace and style of instruction excluded some participants with cognitive disabilities. Project staff adapted with visual aids, and one-on-one support, but noted that additional resources and preparation would have been required.
Overall, these experiences highlight that when challenges arose, they were often linked to limited foresight or insufficient resourcing. A small but striking example stemmed from a project in The Gambia that had to move a meeting on the very topic of inclusion due to the inaccessibility of the venue. In Sri Lanka, implementing partners reported difficulties in securing accessible venues and public transport options. Private alternatives were prohibitively expensive as such costs had not been budgeted for. A Somalia project was critiqued for not embedding disability inclusion from the design stage, a gap echoed across several projects.
The commitment to improve on disability inclusion was clear within these projects and among staff. Yet the challenges they faced during implementation illustrated that overall, as a field there is a need for greater preparedness to address and adapt to inclusivity barriers at both the design and implementation stages. However, some implementing teams applied lessons from these challenges to improve future programming. For instance, staff working on a Western Balkans project had greater success in involving youth with disabilities in trainings, sports activities as well as consultations for the development of a National Youth Strategy in North Macedonia within a follow-on project after facing challenges within the first projects due to access issues.
Beyond access: importance of voice and visibility
Post-project evaluations echoed what youth had long voiced: inclusion must be intentional, and it must begin at the very first stages of project development. The Review’s findings emphasize that disability inclusion extends far beyond physical access. Youth with disabilities like other marginalized groups often face tokenism, when they are included in name only but not necessarily heard or able to shape outcomes and their inclusion thus becomes a tick-box exercise. UNSCR 2250 marked an important shift in recognizing youth as more than beneficiaries of peacebuilding or victims (or perpetrators) of conflict. For youth with disabilities, this shift is particularly significant: it affirms their role as peacebuilders who bring critical perspectives and unique insights instead of predominantly seeing them as merely a vulnerable group. To make this a reality within peacebuilding programming, youth with disabilities must be meaningfully consulted during project design and actively involved at every stage of implementation.
The experiences from Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Somalia, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, The Gambia and beyond make clear that inclusive peacebuilding is possible, but it requires intentionality, resources and the courage to learn from past shortcomings, as well as deeper intersectional analysis to recognize overlapping forms of exclusion and to design inclusive strategies fit for purpose.
This blog is based on an excerpt from the 2025 Peacebuilding Fund Thematic Review on Youth, Peace and Security (YPS). Explore the full Thematic Review on YPS to learn how peacebuilding initiatives can be reimagined to include all youth – without exception.
