Young voices as an important tool in sustainable peace and arms control processes

The Center for Global Nonkilling will be participating in a special side event of the 2022 UN Economic and Social Council Youth Forum to be held online on April 18 at 8 am (EDT / New York). The event will focus on the theme “Young voices as an important tool in sustainable peace and arms control processes” and will include the participation of Elina Viitasaari, CGNK’s UN Gender Focal Point. Other speakers include Hagar Monsif (Maat for Peace), Adrienne Bolina (International Peace Youth Group), Alex Babutsidze (Global Coalition for the Limitation of Armaments and Perrine Cavenne (Peace Building Initiative). All are welcome to join via Zoom.

Young people have played various roles to promote peace, community cohesion, and coexistence. Young women are an essential partner in the peacebuilding process and their participation in the society is highly valued. Civil society organizations have strived to instill many values such as peacebuilding, volunteerism, and youth empowerment inside young people. However, COVID19 came as an extra challenge for that.

To achieve peace and development, the United Nations has given top priority to the reduction and elimination of use of weapons, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, as well as the control of small arms. Thus, now with the largest generation of young people in history, the need for youth awareness in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation is greater than ever. The Secretary-General, in his vision for the future of global cooperation after the spread of COVID19 Pandemic, calls around our achieving agenda 2030 as a framework for a peaceful world that includes a new agenda for peace, international cooperation guided by international law, and improved digital cooperation.

The side event will include youth from different regions around the world to discuss these roles in light of COVID19 that are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals in general and in particular, SDG 5 which aims to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, as well as SDG 16, which aims at establishing peaceful societies, and finally SDG 17, which aims at strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the global partnership for achieving the goals of the sustainable development.

Objectives of the side event:

• Shedding light on the successful models of youth from different regions (Africa, Europe, Asia, the Arab region) and highlighting their efforts in peace building and solving conflicts.
• Raising the awareness of young people from different regions about their role in achieving global peace, and how this is connected to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• Shedding the light on the successful young women playing distinguished roles in supporting peace initiatives in their regions, and leading various campaigns, which is of course in line with the SDG 5.
• Identifying the most important challenges impeding the effective participation of youth in elimination of arms and how young people in different regions were able to effectively reduce the use of arms which resulted in reducing the violence and conflicts.
• Highlighting the role of civil society in supporting the activities and efforts of young people in achieving global peace.