 Hello. Greetings from Washington, DC. I'm very happy to welcome our global audience today. Welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. My name is David Yang. I'm USIP's Vice President for Applied Conflict Transformation. USIP is an independent nonpartisan national institute. We were founded by the US Congress in 1984. Supporting youth peace builders is one of USIP's greatest priorities. That's why I'm particularly excited to welcome you to this forum, which is devoted to the fifth anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on youth, peace, and security. In our program today, we will reflect on the progress that has been made on the YPS agenda and the challenges that remain. USIP seeks to work with youth as critical stakeholders and partners at all levels of peace building. We do this through our Generation Change Fellows Program. The program trains youth leaders on leadership, the reduction of prejudice, and the transformation of conflict. We aim to increase the ability of leaders to transform conflict at the local level and also to reduce the isolation they may feel as peace builders. The program currently has about 300 fellows from 26 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. We're fortunate that today two of our panelists are alumni of the Generation Change Fellows Program. These colleagues Lorena and Midrill also serve on USIP's Advisory Council for Youth. The Council is built on the belief that youth bring distinct and important insights to peace building. The Council also elevates youth voices and experiences into international forums wherein the past youth representatives have been too few. If you're interested in hearing more about today's topic, please attend tomorrow's virtual session at PeaceCon, which USIP is co-hosting with the Alliance for Peace Building. You can get more information on tomorrow's session at AllianceforPeaceBuilding.org. Before I turn over the podium to my USIP colleague, Rebecca Ebenezer-Aviola, I'd like to share a dedication. I dedicate today's forum to the memory of Congressman John Lewis, a representative Lewis passed away last July at 80 years of age. He was one of the great civil rights leaders in the United States, and he was a good friend and strong supporter of USIP. While still in college, the young John Lewis was already a leader in the student movement that sought to desegregate America's public spaces. He was the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which in the US was the only national civil rights organization led by young people. At the time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, an electrifying movement of Negro students has shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South. Though confronted in many places by hoodlums, police guns, tear gas arrests, and jail sentences, the students tenaciously continue to sit down and demand equal service at variety store lunch counters and extend their protests from city to city. It is no overstatement to characterize these events as historic. Never before in the United States has so large a body of students spread a struggle over so great an area in pursuit of a goal of human dignity and freedom. This past summer's global protests for racial justice were also led by young people. A few days after Representative John Lewis' death, The New York Times published his farewell note, which really reads like a letter to young peace builders. Representative Lewis wrote, While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life, you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the Great American Story, when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Then reflecting on his college days, Representative Lewis continued, Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of non-violence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. So when you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state, it is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we call the beloved community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. And then Representative Lewis closed with these words, Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life, I've done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and non-violence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last, and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide. Thus as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Resolution 2250, let us celebrate the life of the young John Lewises around the world, and let us redouble our support for youth peace builders wherever they are courageously working. I'd like to thank Rebecca and her colleagues at USIP Paula Porras, Paul Lee and Allison Milovsky for driving USIP's work on youth. And I thank Lorena Miedrila and Cecile for their leadership and for joining us today. And now over to Rebecca, who's usually based in wet and steamy logos, but who's currently studying in wet and chilly Aberdeen, Scotland. Thanks, Rebecca. Thank you very much, David, for those inspiring words. As David mentioned, tomorrow, December 9 marks the 50th anniversary since the adoption of the first ever UN Security Council Resolution on Youth Peace and Security, that's UNSCR 2250. Prior to 2250, there was no comprehensive framework with which to address the specific needs and opportunities of young people. On 2250, field this gap by providing a framework for viewing, addressing, designing and evaluating peace building activities involving young people. This policy framework focuses on five action areas that make up the youth peace and security agenda. These are participation, protection, prevention, partnership, and disengagement and reintegration. 2250 has been followed by two other resolutions on YPS. These are SCR 2419 in 2018 and SCR 2535 in 2020. And all these resolutions are calling for and emphasizing on the need for full youth participation in peace processes. It's been five years since 2250. What progress have we made? What barriers still exist? And what opportunities can we explore as we continue to strive for meaningful youth inclusion, a lot of aspects of peace building interventions. To help us unpack these issues are three peace builders that are joining us today. Lorena Gomez, Mridul Upadiye, and Cecil Mazakurati. Lorena is a youth peace builder from Colombia. In addition to serving as a member of the USIP Youth Advisory Council, she's also a social entrepreneur, travel builder, and a journalist with a focus on ecotourism. I think you can see from her background. Mridul is serving the second term with the USIP Youth Advisory Council, and is also a generational change fellow from India. Mridul is the Asia coordinator of the UNOY and the co-founder of Youth for Peace International. What's not least is Cecil Mazakurati, who is the head of the Secretariat on Youth Peace and Security at UNFPA and represents the United Nations Peace Building Support Office as the co-chair of the Global Coalition on Youth Peace and Security. Thank you to all the panelists for joining us today. And for all of you who are watching this webcast, remember that you can follow us on social media with today's hashtag. hashtag UNSCR20250. And if you have a question, please use the chat box function located just below this video player on the USIP events page. So let's get started. Cecil, can you walk us through the journey of the adoption of the first resolution on YPS? How did it come about? What prompted it? And who was involved? Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you USIP for organizing this event. Happy birthday to Resolution 20250. It's really exciting to already be celebrating this fifth anniversary. And so five years ago, the adoption of Resolution 20250 took everyone by surprise. The Kingdom of Jordan, who had a seat in the Security Council at that moment, had committed to getting a resolution on young people adopted. But nevertheless, it seemed really far-fetched. We all know that the Security Council can be very divided, including among its permanent members. The Security Council had said very little about young people. And as we know in international for rights, it's very hard to get new language adopted by member states in resolution. So it didn't seem at all, frankly, likely that it would happen. So it really was a feast when the text was adopted. It really was a momentous achievement by the Kingdom of Jordan who was able to bring together the members of the people and get the resolution unanimously adopted. A resolution that included a lot of new language around young people and peace, including language coming from young people themselves. And from in particular the Amman Youth Declaration, which had been adopted by hundreds and thousands of young people around the world the previous summer. And that's really where youth peace and security and the resolution comes from. It comes from young people. It comes from young peace builders throughout the world, who for years before the adoption of 2250, loved their government, loved international and non-governmental organizations, loved the United Nations people like me to say, we need a text that would say young people have a place at the table. We need a resolution similar to the Women Peace and Security Resolution Resolution 1325 because we see how for women's groups and women peace builders, they can really use it to engage with their government. And so it's young people that started this process with various organizations at local level, at international level, the United Network of Young Peace Builders, which Marie Dole is a member of, was really leading the charge. It's a network of youth peace building organizations. And their members were very engaged and really started this movement. Another key constituency was international peace building organizations, non-governmental peace building organizations. What is now called youth peace and security really came from the youth peace building field. And for peace building organizations, it was always very clear that you can only build peace working with local actors, including young women and men. And so pushed by these two main constituencies, slowly the UN system member states got interested and started getting engaged. And at first it really was just a network of individuals in various organizations who all got interested and committed and decided basically to join forces and create this partnership beyond organizational structures to push this discussion and help push the call of young people. So we created an interagency platform, which is now called the Global Coalition on Youth Peace and Security, which originally was called the interagency working group on youth and peace building when it was first created in 2012. And really already at that time with the idea, again pushed by young peace builders, that a resolution was what they wanted. At that time adopting a resolution seemed really far fetched. So we developed guiding principles, overarching principles that should guide our engagement with young people in peace building, be gender sensitive, protect young people, reach out to the most marginalized and ensure diversity of young people are engaged. And this also helped pave the way towards the adoption of the resolution. So in the end it really is I think the illustration of the famous quote by Margaret Mead never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has because it really was this small coalition of various individuals that was eventually able to get the resolution adopted. Thank you, Cecil. Lorena, let me come to you as a young person from Columbia. What is the significance of 2250 to you? How has it impacted your peace building work? Well, I want to first say hello to everyone who's online. And yeah, welcome you all. Thank you for being here. And yes, I guess my answer to that question has a story behind because this resolution came to my life in July 2018, because I didn't really know about the resolution before. But then there was you an officer, his name is Mauricio Artilla Artiniano, he's from Costa Rica. And he works with the UN verification mission here in Columbia. And he decided to activate this resolution in order to do something with the park, with park guerrilla transition base camps. So he wanted to help them activate their local projects. And he used the resolution to enable the UN to lend us the helicopters. And he called upon a group of youth peace builders and social entrepreneurs who could support and help activate their projects. So he called a big group of ours and thanks to him and the resolution we were able to travel to these areas. I went to one of the areas who were really at the heart of conflict in Columbia. The name of the place is Elcaguan. Normally Colombians are usually quite scared about going there, but it felt good to feel that the UN was with us. We felt secure enough in order to access the place. And then we were the first visitors of this rafting project that has been growing after our visit. And that was the first time I came really into intimate touch with former guerrilla combatants. And it was an important experience also to me, not only as a Colombian, because it meant a lot to see that place from a different perspective and understand these people's point of view. But also professionally because it enabled me to see the challenges that haven't been noticed yet in tourism and post-conflict projects. And that is that mainly these tour guides, emerging tour guides, they really lack, they need to strengthen their interpersonal communication skills in order to create conversations that inspire oneness instead of division. Because everybody, especially Colombians, when you visit the place, there's a lot happening in between at an emotional level. So meeting them was very illustrative for me. And that was the first opportunity that allowed me to notice that, develop concepts and some work around that topic, like thinking of the psychological process. So these new tour guides want to develop because they also want it as well for them to tell their stories and manage difficult conversations and have a tourism narrative that connects everyone and avoids conflict or prevents it by generating a proper context and humane connection. So it was actually amazing because three years later, I was hired by these same social project, they are now a social enterprise called Caguan Expeditions. And they hired me because I had the experience no one else had before to assess them as someone who works in ecotourism and narratives. So just last October, I was able to go back and use all that previous experience to assess them. And since there was trust already, I was able to share with them three weeks and have a lot of coffees and understand them well and help them feel the narrative. So really this resolution ended up being a chance for me to access a new part of Columbia, not only regionally but also the opportunity to work with a new community because I had always worked with Indigenous people, but there is a completely different approach when you go to another group. So they have a very special dynamic and that also impacted my peace building work because I learned this strategy was not about doing workshops but rather having a lot of night coffees with them with long conversations about life. So yeah, I would say that's how it has impacted and last but not least, well it also showed me in the process I realized because I am young, I am a peace builder, because I normally didn't use to call myself like that, I just did my work. So I realized this resolution exists and there is a whole movement, an entire movement around youth, like using these two keywords opens a lot of doors, and that's how I also got engaged in a program, the University of Georgetown organizes for Latin American leaders, youth leaders, and also with the USIP. So I'm personally very thankful to that resolution, it opened a whole new world for me. Thank you Lorena for sharing those personal stories. Ridu, let me come to you. How would you say the role of young people have changed in peace building interventions and what has 2250 got to do with that. So as it has been previously mentioned by Cecil and Lorena, young people work and young people are anyway doing a lot of peace building work, despite all the barriers that they were facing or if they are getting supported or not. So I would not say that the role has changed role is still the same young people are contributing to peace building interventions. What has changed is something else. So why we wanted this resolution was that young people were asking for recognition and support so that they can do more work so that they can get protected so that the voices can make direct changes in the institutions and in the systems. And that is happening slightly and UNSCR 2250 actually became that global consensus on young people's positive role in peace building. So yeah, that mindset change, I think that is something what UNSCR 2250 has brought before that there was nothing we kept saying there was some research that we kept showing to the people to the stakeholder that young people are doing at large young people are coming from positive intentions and contributing to peace building, but this resolution actually became that global consensus, and the five pillars of UNSCR 2250 which is participation, protection, partnership, participation, and disengagement and the integration. So these five pillars actually became the key important thematic directions of recommendation to advance the youth peace and security work. So, yeah, the role of young people hasn't changed, but how others stakeholders are engaging young people that has started changing slightly. Thank you, Maridol, and I can say that that's some progress that has been made if engagement with the way others stakeholders are engaging with young people have changed that some significant progress. Cecil, I wonder if you can articulate some other progress that have been made in the YPS space since 2015 when this resolution was adopted. Thank you, Rebecca. Well, to me, the most significant progress is when it has, when we see that the resolution has had an impact on young people's lives, you know, including their individual experiences like the one we just heard from Lorena, I think it's a great story. If we take a more macro level perspective. So what has changed, I think significantly is the narrative about young people's relationship to peace and security. Thanks to, again, young people's advocacy primarily, and with the help of the resolution, we shifted from a predominantly negative discourse about young people as a threat for peace, which generally had a subversion, which is youth unemployment as a global threat for peace towards a positive narrative, recognizing that it's only ever a minority of young people who are engaged in violence, that in all contexts, the majority of young people are peaceful and want to go on with their lives like everyone else, they want to go to school, they want to have a job, they want to have a family, and that some of them are doing tremendous piece building work that has not been recognized, funded and supported enough. And that narrative, which was not at all the dominant narrative in 2014, even in 2015, and even in 2016, I think now we've really seen an evolution. We see much less automatic association of young people and violent extremist groups of youth unemployment as a problem for peace. I think the narrative has been really refined, and really everyone has seen that actually evidence tells us that young people are peaceful and that we should be focusing on that. So that I think is the most significant progress. With that came, of course, the political buy-in. It started in the Security Council, but we saw it growing well beyond the walls of the council with white support from numerous member states, which of course is very important because that's part of the reshaping of this narrative. And most importantly, of course, is the progress and impact at field level. And so we've seen more interventions, programs supporting the work of young people. I think we've seen much better programming in part of the work I do is to work with or field colleagues in developing programs on youth peace and security. And we see a lot less of let's create a network of young people and a lot more of they are young people who are active for peace. Let's find them. Let's see what they need. Let's see how we can support them. Let's put in place mechanisms that are sustainable and durable and that do not create top-down approaches that are really supporting bottom-up approaches. I think another important indicator of progress has been the building of coalitions on youth peace and security. And we've seen coalitions at the national level in a number of countries, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nigeria, India as a regional knows more than anyone. And many others they are regional level coalitions and these coalitions were bringing together partners, again, from a civil society from government counterparts from the UN have really been instrumental in pushing the agenda at regional level. I want to say a couple of things that I think have not progressed enough because it's important to keep that in mind as we enter into this new phase. And two things in particular. The first one is funding, because we can talk about youth peace and security as much as we'd like. If we don't actually support the efforts of young peace builders, we're not going to get really far and we know a lot of the youth peace building work is done by very small organizations that might not even be an organization, the bank account might not have a structure, but nevertheless, it's, you know, a lot of volunteers who are full of great ideas. How do we support them for the fantastic work that they do? And that is still really a glaring gap, I would say, of the youth peace and security agenda. And the other areas where things have not progressed, where actually things have gotten worse, I think, is the protection of young peace builders. It's always been an issue, young peace builders, young and old human rights activists have always been under threats. But we've seen in the past year, an important restriction of the civic space. We all know it. And we've seen it directly on young peace builders. We've seen an increase in the threats and harassments they face. We know that young peace builders who are also directly engaging with the international community, with the United Nations and with others are being directly threatened and punished for that. That I think is a dramatic evolution and really something we need to prioritize going forward. That's such an important point to touch on that even though we've made so much progress, there's still some areas that still need a lot of work. And Ridul, I wonder if you can speak more to that from a young person's perspective. What are those barriers that still exist? Cecil has mentioned quite a few, but from your own perspective, at the national and community level, what would we say are some of the barriers that still exist to meaningful youth involvement, meaningful youth engagement in peace building. Yeah, so I think Cecil has already pointed out a few. I will just try to like picture this in two ways. One is the micro kind of things and one is micro kind of things. If you want to understand the micro kind of things then you can read the resolutions, the five pillars, those were existing barriers, those were the challenges and that's why we wanted to have this resolution. So how much participation is happening, who is participating, are young people being able to participate socially, economically and at a meaningful and active level in the decision making, that's there. Physically of course. So then how much partnership is happening between the stakeholder to do peace building work and how young people are contributing to that, the protection of young peace builders, that is already mentioned. And then it's the prevention part. How much we are working on the prevention instead of let's say mitigating the effect of it, and what are the strategies of prevent. So is it a building part or is it preventing or actual, let's say, whole of society approach from the very beginning. That kind of prevention and then the disengagement and the integration so all of these pillars are itself an answer to some of the challenges which were identified. So that's one now going deeper into these conversations so funding protection. These things are already mentioned I will just slightly elaborate on these points. So how about participation itself. So the important thing about participation is that. Okay I'll come to the implementation part later but in order to ensure meaningful and active participation and decision making young people actually need to have some kind of representational role right like in a country like India where we are having 400 million young people these 400 million young people themselves cannot directly engage in decision making. So they need to have a consultation done with young people. We need to identify priorities a coalition need to be built a research need to happen. All of these kinds of things are need to happen, but young people are not trusted with big consultations or running a network or running a coalition. This is left with big organizations I NGOs. So you know if young people are not supported for research and for running these consultation, how young people will be able to identify the national level priorities and be able to introduce it to the decision maker. So that's the kind of approach that's one barrier, which we are facing in the community. Now going to. Okay just adding to it, which I would want to even bring later, which is, even if let's say we are having these priorities with us. What is happening now with these resolution we are talking a lot about implementation. So the advocacy can be very much right based where we are like okay we are the young people this is our issue. This gives us space, and we want to decide for ourselves. So it's a very right based, but unfortunately it seems that implemented implementation cannot be right based implementation looks merit based whoever has the resources, whoever has the capacity, they will be implementing. So now when we are talking about implementing of UNSCR 2250 there young people can be sidelined or token tokenize very easily. It's like if you have the resources, if you have the understanding of how the implementation need to happen, then only you will engage in the decision making of the implementation. So that's also a barrier around participation, going further. The second part is protection which is already mentioned, and this protection is not only limited to like political protection but social and economic protection as well. Like once someone start working in peace building field, if that the volunteering is the only option for them. It's not only the brain brain happening after some time but it is the peace building potential dream happening. Young people very early starting volunteering with organizations doing a lot of peace building work, but then they feel then they see that there is no like future in this field they are not able to earn their livelihoods and this and they had to switch to some other field. These amazing young people you see and you get very disappointed when your team members are leaving because we cannot sustain them, because our organization is zero budget initiative or we are not able to use the fund. And that's a very huge thing. Second part is social protection as well. So the society itself, it's the idea of how young people are seen as opportunist as someone who are doing this work to join UN or to attend conferences and this narrative itself that the trust of community is not there. So that kind of protection actually harms young people a lot when we are having any partnership the trust when we don't see it just demotivates us a lot. So these like other than the physical protection and so the physical and mental protection is also very important reason being one more thing because this protection, if you're talking about human right defenders, then they still have some kind of support groups, but young people support group is not there. Still, so global coalitions thematic working group is working on that creating that kind of support group for young people. But that is something that we need to work on. And the last part is funding, of course, that that contributes to a lot of things. So, I'd like to follow up on what Cecil and Riddle have mentioned about some of these barriers you've mentioned funding lack of resources protection. What would be your recommendation for overcoming these barriers. And any of you can answer, Lorena Riddle Cecil, what else, what would be your recommendation. There are already recommendations, I think, not just from three of us, but 4,230 young people, we have this independent progress study on with peace and security the missing piece. Young people from all over the world have called different stakeholder for the kind of things that they want the kind of implementation that they want how inclusive it should be. What can be the guiding principles. That is also lined up it just now we need to act on it different stakeholder need to do a little bit more to be able to work on it I think that that's my feeling when I see. Lorena. I think there's sort of an approach that might be missing. It's not only about participation participation is not just giving a chair to someone and have nominal participation, you know, it's really how to have intergenerational dialogue which I think is an approach. We're probably missing because it is also true and I've noticed that and learned it a lot from indigenous communities. We cannot be. We cannot know a lot of things if we don't learn from elders, and they also get energy from us. There's a mutual, mutually beneficial relationship that we should poster. And we should also that in, let's say, for instance, a mutual feedback and dialogue spaces and decision making that includes enough people from both sides and like dialogue in that sense that makes it more horizontal not just have one representative and all use or whatever because that ends up being a lot of responsibility and it. Well, it's a minority that's seated on the table, instead of promoting like real dialogue between generations which I think it's much more useful and in that sense you can create a common agenda and assign a common budget. Because without budget, there's, as we say in Colombia, in rural Colombia, like there's no reality as long as you don't have a clear budget, like nothing will happen. Just based on words. And, and adding to what they said, what Murdo and Cecil mentioned about what might be missing. I want to add that I'm probably adding the concept of supporting social entrepreneurship and talking about budget could also strengthen the resolution because it makes having a social enterprise makes you less gives you autonomy. It really creates an idea of abundance and yeah, it activates more processes just that don't necessarily need to be attached to what's happening in the biggest in the big scale now. So, that makes it easier to keep on moving while things move on the international in the international scenario. Just two more things I would like to add. There's, we can also start talking more about causes of peace, following what Cecil said a while ago, instead of causes of violence and conflict like we should insist in that language and think more about how you can flourish and have meaningful jobs, how they can have and how they make sense, and strengthen their identity because I think as long as people, as long as you know who you are, you're not going to let someone else convince you of who you have to be, in order to be accepted feel accepted feel masculine having a gun or anything like that. So I think really focusing on a personal development approach, which I know several programs are doing already but maybe including that in the resolution and as Cecil said a while ago again, is changing the narrative like improving the narrative that already exists could sum up a lot. And as a strategic idea, I would say journalism is a key, is a key point here, I believe, and media that helps protect youth leaders. So, but, but well with that one, just to say, Okay, no, I'm going to leave it there. And I'll let you continue. Thank you, Lorena. We're even still going to unpack many of the things you said about some things that are missing from the resolution. But first, let me remind everyone that is watching right now that you can interact with our panelists by dropping your questions in the chat function under the webcasts. All right, and earlier in the conversation, Cecil talked about WPS that's women peace and security agenda. Many people consider WPS as the older older sibling to YPS, you know, and it has been a guiding light for for the youth peace and security agenda, which we all know is quite a is still a developing space. Cecil, what do you think we can learn from WPS and other inclusive spaces that can be adapted to YPS what opportunities you think we need to explore to improve the YPS agenda in general. WPS is definitely the older sister of resolution 2250. I mean, it was an inspiration. Again, it's young people who said we see how 1325 is useful to women's groups, we want something like that that will help open the doors for us. So it's really, I mean the two resolutions are the two agendas are really the two facets of the same coin and that coin is the inclusivity of peace as a condition for its sustainability. And there's so much that YPS learned from WPS and first and foremost the centrality of a gender analysis in everything we do that is related to peace and security, and youth peace and security is fundamentally a gender agenda, because it is about deconstructing violence in young communities and passive feminities. It is about promoting the leadership of young women. It is certainly not about bringing back the emphasis on young men it's actually deconstructing these stereotypes that are detrimental to all young people young men who are blocked in this, you know, idea of, you know, violent manhood, and young women who are only portrayed as as victims. It's a very first lesson for from from WPS. And so what actually happened in 2000 and early 2016, just after the adoption of resolution 20 to 50 as I said earlier, we didn't expect the resolution to be adopted so it caught all of us by surprise and so in early 2016, the whole coalition of actors working on these issues without okay and now what what do we do so we thought well let's ask women peace and security colleagues, what's their advice to us because it's been 15 years for for implementation of the WPS agenda. Let's hear what they have to tell us about what we should do and not do. They told us a lot of really interesting things that we followed quite scrupulously. They told us build the evidence base demonstrate provide evidence provide data about how young people contribute to peace which is what we did with the progress study on youth peace and security that we don't just mentioned that was based on extensive research consultations country case studies etc. They said, raise awareness. It's not because you have a resolution that people know it that people understand it and that people are going to use it, take any opportunity you have to make it known to talk about it, and to bring this narrative forward, which is also something that we and I say we as it's really the real real collective of organizations and partners, did with multiple events on youth peace and security, including among others with us IP. They said prioritize partnership and build coalitions which is also something in that case that was a condition to the adoption of 2250, but that has continued to be prioritized and I've mentioned the coalitions at country and regional level. They also say prioritize localization support the work of local actors so that the implementation is bottom up and it's not top down, because that's the only way of course it will work. So if you say prioritize accountability and monitoring, you need concrete indicators, you need specific accountability systems, you need system wide action plan so that everybody has the same vision and the same objectives. And I would say that is maybe the one part of their advice that we haven't been able to do so much progress on we've talked a lot about youth let accountability systems. Support young people holding governments, multilateral organizations, including the security council accountable for the implementation of 2250, but there's still a lot more work to do there. I think one of the fundamental lesson that we've. I think that we're all learning WPS and YPS is how do you keep the balance between the keeping the political edge and the movement that's really behind this agenda. Again, it comes from people who want war to end. But at the same time, when you want organizations to embrace it, you need also concrete so smaller scale objectives right so you need to be able to say we're going to increase the number of female in our armed forces, and we need to have to reserve seats for women young on the table so how do you balance the technical checklist approach that is needed for progress to be done, but how do you keep the political momentum and the political edge that is I think the fundamental challenge of these agendas. So if anyone has suggestions that would be great to hear. And please definitely drop those suggestions in the chat box we would love to hear your thoughts. So. Now, looking at the YPS, all the resolutions, there are already three resolutions now since 252 other resolutions are followed really quickly in 2018 and we had 2535 just this year that was adopted. What do you think is missing in these resolutions or what do you think needs to be added in future resolutions I know Lorena has already started touching on those in her earlier contribution, you know, but just in your own opinion. In fact, would even say we need more resolutions, you know, you know, do we need more resolutions and if we do what should be in those future resolutions what do you think is missing in this current resolutions. And again, any of our panelists can answer. Here we go. Please go ahead. We need more resolutions. There's one point that we can think of, because of which that we have it seems to be sufficient in order to do a lot of peace building work in the near future. The other mindset also says that we need to have more resolution, just so youth peace and security is continuing to be in the discourse. And when I'm saying so, we need to be very mindful about the political dimension or the divide that the council members have at the Security Council, which is what Cecil was mentioning in the beginning. Somehow we need to go beyond that divide because currently that divide is creating a lot of intended and unintended consequences. I give you this context. The resolution says that majority of young people are not the victim or perpetrator of violence, but the peace builder or somewhere living their own lives, not like in the violence or doing something to not have the conflict. We are having that kind of dimension, but as much as we are talking about counter violent extremism or preventing violent extremism or counter terrorism, we are creating something counterproductive. We are creating again and again, or we are highlighting again and again the same perpetrator and victim role. Since 911 in the same Security Council, which has produced three resolutions in the last five years, since 911 it has created 82 resolutions on counter violent extremism and PV. 82 every year it is creating four resolutions. You see so over the 19 years it is producing every year for resolution at least four or five resolutions, but in youth peace and security we are having only three. It seems that we need to produce more so that we are having more of these conversations, otherwise the attention, otherwise the discourse is going somewhere else, even after having the same positive discourse in the same council. So this is what I think. I think that I would say, yeah, it's because the narrative needs to evolve. We need more resolutions in order to speak in a in a way that makes helps youth make more sense and everyone, because if we emphasize and I agree with myrtle, if we emphasize always in counter violent extremism, we're always talking about how to attend disaster. This works like in risk management programs instead of real prevention, but prevention not thought only as prevention, but how can we help others really flourish and become themselves and engage with their surroundings, including nature as a living being to which you should also relate in a peaceful way because it is not only between humans we need to make peace. So I think it's more about how to help youth grow in a meaningful way and not just how to avoid them taking arms because we can be violent in so many ways. That's why non violence. I love that David in open the introduction and talked about non violence consists not. It's how can we react non violently, even with our families because I've seen even the root of these violences starts in the families. So how can we have also family approach, because many of these youth, at least in Columbia, and in general in Latin America, they go out from their houses because they don't feel accepted they have a violent family so they just want to go and find a group to belong to. And that's what they get involved in this kind of yeah, and groups that use arms and drugs. And, and adding to that, as well in a way to help protect I was about to mention the journalism point. I believe that is incredibly important and we need to find a strategic ways for us to go through media and tell our stories. And because I, I recently met a social leader in Columbia he's a well experienced and communist leader. Well, I mean, communist now he belong to park and he's a farmer. The point is, he said something, he said something like, you know, I'm more afraid of someone who knows how to write. Can you hear me. Yes, go ahead Lorena. Sorry, last connection for a second. I'm more afraid of someone who knows how to write well and can use a pen than from someone who has a gun. He said journalism has created conflict in Columbia more than anything else like biased words. So we should also make an emphasis on that, I believe, and look for strategic ways, at least in my case, I try to do, I do travel writing as a side approach to mention things in order to keep myself safe. And also what I like about tourism narratives is that I help people tell their own stories. So that doesn't put me at risk, but it's more like something that's collective and doesn't have a one single face. So we can look for strategies in terms of media that can strengthen that our security. And just to finish, I would say, yeah, education of the heart like, let's not forget that approach. Just recalling that he's holding his Dalai Lama. Thank you Lorena for mentioning that. So still do you have anything to add. We have quite a number of questions in the from our audience. Just very briefly, I mean, there's a lot more that resolutions on youth peace and security could say there's a lot more to say about the role of young women for peace and security. There's a lot more to say around human rights and protection issues. There's a lot more to say on the relationship between climate change and peace and security and the role of young people in raising attention and awareness on all that. There's more operational directions that could be given. And we know that it's not because we have good language that we can't go back and we've seen it at sadly this year with the 20th anniversary of Resolution 1325 and the failed attempt to have a new resolution on women, peace and security adopted because some council members felt that the proposed text was going was going back on a number of elements that were already acquired. So we have to be we have to keep growing and pushing, including at the political level for this agenda but I just want to end by saying that Resolution 2535 which was adopted this summer really is a fabulous resolution in the sense that it includes all these very operational and concrete elements. It tells the United Nations in particular do this, develop these guidelines, prioritize protection, appoint focal points etc. So these types of resolution really helped pave the way to do some very good work. So, so at least we have a very good foundation to work on. I agree 2535 really lays some concrete recommendations, you know on how to operationalize, you know the YPS agenda. Somebody is asking in the audience. The question is do you think setting up a specific youth peace security UN fund to support grassroots young people's initiative for transformative change. Do you think that would help? The complicated funding on youth peace and security will help is needed. Should it be with the UN, should it be with other partners. That's another discussion I mean we've tried within the UN to get funding allocated to youth led organizations and very often it's very complicated because of a number of administrative requirements, donor requirements etc. It is needed. They are efforts within the UN system such as the youth promotion initiative from the peace building fund to allocate funding to civil society organizations so that they can do their work on youth and peace building. But what we've seen is that very often it's very hard for youth organizations to access this funding because they don't have an annual budget of $300,000. They don't have audit reports. They don't have all these requirements that are normal for a big donor to ask. So what we need is a funding system that is also really tailored to the needs and to the capacities of young people. You know, have them do a proposal through video. Why do you need to read necessarily a results matrix have them do and you know monitoring of their projects through you know visual based forms etc. So there's a lot that can be innovated and get that going to be thought about but for sure we need dedicated funding. Yeah, I'm just adding to it. It should be probably independent and multi partner so that the community itself can own the decision making as well. Thank you. We're going to the end of our session today, but somebody asked us to rate to rate the five pillars. Does anybody want to take that. How do you want me to to mention participation, partnership, prevention, protection, disengagement and the integration. Thank you so much. And thank you all to all our panelists for joining us today it's been a really engaging conversation with you all and see you another time. Thank you for joining us. Bye for now. And I send a big hug for everyone to everyone from the Columbia and Amazon. Thank you.