Young Peacebuilders Meet at UN to Share What Works

While wars rage across the globe, a group of young peacebuilders met at UN Headquarters with a message that could change how the world approaches conflict resolution.

The gathering happened during the first ever UN Peacebuilding Week, where youth leaders from Afghanistan, Ghana, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, and beyond shared what really helps them organize communities for peace. Their answer surprised many: funding matters, but it's not everything.

Issah Toha Shamsoo from Ghana didn't wait for permission to start building peace. After watching news coverage of the 2019 attack in New Zealand, he brought different religious groups together for dialogue without even knowing it was called peacebuilding.

His story echoes across continents. In Côte d'Ivoire, Linda Dempah discovered that creating jobs through her biocosmetics company keeps young people from joining armed groups. "People who have good jobs and who feel good about where they are in life tend not to want to engage in things that will disrupt that," she explained.

But these young leaders face real obstacles. Yahya Qanie from Afghanistan described how youth were constantly told they lacked experience and faced impossibly high bars for securing funding. His team once couldn't access more than $700 to start their work.

The challenges go deeper than money. Young peacebuilders report limited trust in youth leadership, suppression of civil society spaces, and lack of protection when they speak out. In Afghanistan today, youth civic spaces have closed completely under Taliban rule.

Jenn Hernandez from the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders emphasized what young people actually need. Women across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia told her they want partnerships with the private sector and chances to learn technical skills that last.

John Koester highlighted an invisible problem: young peacebuilders spend over 40 percent of their time on "unfundable" activities like building trust, maintaining relationships, and recovering from trauma. Current funding models ignore this reality.

The Ripple Effect

The UN is listening. Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs Felipe Paullier hopes to embed youth partnership principles into at least one global UN financing mechanism. UNFPA's Pio Smith acknowledged that national action plans often shine on vision but fall short on budgets and long-term resource commitments.

These young leaders aren't waiting for perfect conditions. They're proving that when communities invest in youth who understand local conflicts, sustainable peace becomes possible.