First International Symposium on Youth Participation in Peace Processes

– As delivered –

Statement by H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73^rd Session of the UN General Assembly

18 September 2018

Your Excellency, Mr Timo Soini, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland,

Distinguished Guests,

Friends,

Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me begin by acknowledging the youth peacebuilders in this Symposium, with whom I just had a very stimulating conversation over lunch. You and all those your represent, are the champions of this agenda.

Gizem Kilinc, thank you very much for your kind introduction and for the crucial work you do with the UNOY Peacebuilders.

I am truly honoured to be part of the First International Symposium on Youth Participation in Peace Processes. This is an historic occasion. So, I would like to begin by congratulating the organizers – the Governments of Finland, Qatar and Colombia; Search for Common Ground; and the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth; as well as their partners – the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, UNDP, UNFPA and the UNOY network of youth peace organizations.

Let me state unequivocally that I am fully committed to the youth, peace and security agenda. And I am fully committed to working with you and all 193 Member States to make this agenda central to the work of the General Assembly.

I assure you, these are not just warm words put together for this occasion. Youth, peace and security has been at the heart of my work from the outset. It is one of the seven priorities for my Presidency.

These priorities were shaped through my own experiences – of seeing firsthand how young diplomats achieve breakthroughs in difficult negotiations, for instance. As Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence, following the dynamics of conflict and peace building as well as forced migrations and integration. They were also shaped by extensive consultations on the most transformative changes needed to realise the Sustainable Development Goals: the international community’s blueprint for a safer, fairer and more sustainable world.

And the common thread? Youth.

On youth, peace and security, I am working hard to promote the full inclusion of young people in peace processes. Six hundred million young people – a third of the total youth population – live in fragile and conflict-affected states. Often, we focus on those in the most extreme situations: child soldiers, survivors of sexual violence. And rightly so.

But we must do more to reach out to young people who are simply trying to live their lives in conflict situations, and who have the same needs and wants as young people the world over. We must do more to support young people working for peace in different ways.

We know that young people helped to foster intercommunal dialogue in Kenya to address post-election violence. We know young people held events to consolidate peace in countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia. We know they are trying to provide humanitarian support in countries such as Yemen. We know they have risked their lives to document human rights violations in places such as Syria and Colombia. We know they continue to campaign for nuclear disarmament in Japan – seven decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And yet – what percentage of negotiators and mediators are under 30? What happens when the Martti Ahtisaari’s of this world are not available? We need to nurture a new generation of peacebuilders, who like Mr. Ahtisaari, can make the impossible dream of peace come true. We must involve young people at all stages of our work for peace.

Dear friends,

The same is true for my other priorities.

On decent work, we need to engage youth in the conversation around the future of work in the context of what is being called the fourth industrial revolution. We need to address the unacceptably high youth unemployment rate – three times that of adults – and ensure that young people are working in secure jobs with good conditions and social protections.

On empowering persons with disabilities, we need to do much more to ensure that services and opportunities are tailored to the needs of young people. The advances in information, communication and technology, automation and artificial intelligence creates a vast new world where physical disability is not a bar to achievement in any field.

Equally, young people, whether as migrants or refugees, need support as agents of change, who can contribute to both their countries of origin and destination.

Gender equality is one of my priorities. The continuing disempowerment of women and girls, and their absence from leadership positions, imposes huge costs on all societies and limits our ability to achieve sustainable development.  Next week, I will host a high-level event on Women in Power in New York, where I am bringing together women leaders of all ages to promote dialogue and learning – on both sides.

We also need to listen to young people on my priority on environmental action. You, young people, are way ahead of us in grasping the urgency of climate change, and in being prepared to take the action we need. I have nothing but admiration for activists like Greta Thunberg, for the students who took to the streets in Finland and around the world. Young people led the way in calling for an end to single-use plastics. And I will do my best to support them through my plastic pollution campaign.

Finally, young people are crucial to revitalizing the United Nations. We cannot hope to make the UN more effective, more accountable and more relevant if we do not engage youth.

Friends,

I am greatly encouraged by the work of Jayathma, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, and by the excellent new UN strategy for youth 2030.

But we still have a mountain to climb when it comes to meaningful youth participation. Just 38 states sent youth delegates to the opening of this session of the General Assembly. Too few of my colleagues have Aya’s the Youth Envoy for the AU, perspective on the challenges we face. I still find myself sitting in meetings on youth, listening to a series of grey-haired speakers pontificate about the importance of hearing young voices. This only adds to the sense of alienation, and the lack of trust, that young people have in institutions. In life I have learnt that transnational terms and settings are more effective and powerful.

We adults may mean well, but this has to change.

First, we must change the narrative on youth. Today, we hear too little about the demographic dividend of youth. Instead, we are warned about the so-called demographic time bomb of unemployment, fertility and violence.

Last year’s seminal “Missing Peace” study highlighted that too many policy-makers still see young people as problems to be solved. They associate them with political violence, with criminal activity, with extremism – and all on the basis of lazy assumptions and flawed or partial data that ignores two things:

• that only a tiny proportion of young people are involved in such activities. And,
• that several other factors, including deep-seated structural inequalities, are at work here.

It is similar to the old debates on gender equality, which put the onus on women to do better, to work harder, to dress more modestly, without tackling the societal, political, economic and institutional causes of sexism. We have to start celebrating the positive contribution that young people make, and I will be sure to use what I heard at my lunch with youth representatives earlier today in my speeches and statements going forward.

Second, we should take seriously the recommendation in the Missing Peace report to allocate $1.8 billion dollars to youth – representing just one dollar per young person – by 2025, the tenth anniversary of Security Council Resolution 2250. Youth programmes and organisations continue to be underfunded in all regions of the world. We need to invest in the capacities, agency and leadership of young people even as we call on them to work with us to address global challenges.

And lastly, we must improve youth participation in national and international decision-making. At the UN, this means encouraging more Member States to include young people in their delegations. It means working closely with Jayathma’s office and others to find ways to increase meaningful youth participation in our work – not just through token side-events or one-off consultations.

Dear friends,

I am fully committed to ensuring young people are heard – and listened to – during my term as President of the General Assembly, including, of course, on the crucial youth, peace and security agenda.

I will be following closely the discussions and ideas generated at this Symposium and look forward to engaging with you today and in the future.

Thank you.