 Good afternoon, everybody. I hope everybody's joining us from all parts of our virtual world. You're very welcome. This lunchtime, my name is Suzanne Keating. I'm the CEO of Docus, the Association of Irish NGOs. I'm very honored to be chairing this webinar today, the fourth in the IIEA Development Matters Lecture Series, which is of course, supported by Irish aid. We are here of course, to be inspired by Miss Aya Chebi, former AU Special Envoy on Youth and Chair of the Nala Feminist Collective, who's been very generous enough to come here with us today. My only regret, of course, is that we're not here in person so that we could show you our beautiful city of Dublin, but I can assure you the sun is shining today for a change. And as many of you know, I arose to fame during the 2010-2011 Tunisian Revolution and since then has won many awards for her persuasive and influential role as a Pan-African feminist. She's also, she was designated as one of Africa's 50 most powerful women on the Forbes list and is recipient of the 2019 Gates Campaign Award. Perhaps much more important to us and to Irish listeners, she is the only Tunisian and one of the youngest ever people to be nominated for the Tipperary International Peace Award. It's absolutely amazing. Miss Chebi will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to Q&A. As always, please join our discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see there on your screen. Don't hold back with the questions. Please feel free to send them at any time throughout the session and we'll try to get as many answered as possible. Just a quick reminder today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Do also encourage you to tweet away using the handle at IIEA. We're also live streaming this morning's discussion, so a very welcome to all of you out there tuning in via YouTube. I know my kids would be delighted as they know how to find out more than I do. But before we hand over to Miss Chebi, I would like to give the floor to Phelan McLaughlin, head of Global Programs Unit in Irish Aid to deliver the opening remarks on behalf of Irish Aid. Thank you. Well, thanks very much, Suzanne and hello to everyone who's watching today. I'd like to begin by sincerely thanking indeed Aya Chebi for being with us today to discuss the power of youth communication and the SDGs. It's a real pleasure for me to represent Irish Aid today at this event. And as Suzanne mentioned, we're very pleased to support the IIEA's Development Matters series as we facilitate discussion of important aspects of global development. And today's discussion is particularly timely as we try to refocus on the global challenge of achieving the SDGs. And refocusing is particularly important at this time when we're seeing a lot of the gains of recent years being eroded or in fact, being wiped out by the effects of the pandemic. Over the course of a year and a half, we've seen 100 million people being pushed into extreme poverty. And last year alone, 101 million people, children indeed, fell below the minimum reading proficiency level. And while we hope that once the pandemic is over, we'll see children returning to school. We know that for many thousands, that won't be the case. And that girls in particular will be the ones who remain at home. And this is at a time when the proportion of young people in the general population is increasing in many parts of the world, in Africa, in South Asia and elsewhere. So we have this multi-dimensional challenge of ensuring that the needs of these young populations are catered to, that they receive the education that they need, that they have the opportunities that they require and that they have a voice in the decisions that are gonna have a profound effect on them, on their future and the future of the planet more generally. So that's quite a challenge ahead of us. And it's really, I suppose, the crux of today's discussion. And I can think of few people better qualified than Ayesha B to help us reflect on the substance of these points. Suzanne's already listed many of her enormous achievements. She's extremely well qualified to speak on these matters. She's a graduate of the Tunis-Almanar University. She's received both a Fulbright scholarship and a Moe Ibrahim scholarship for further study at Georgia's South University and at Zoos in London, respectively. Suzanne mentioned she was the first AU Special Envoy for Youth and is currently the chair of the Nala Famous Collective. Once again, Aya, thanks so much for joining us today and I'm really looking forward to hearing your input and to the discussion that takes place afterwards. Thank you. Thank you so much for this beautiful and generous introduction. Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you to the Irish Association of NGOs. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the Institute of International European Affairs for the invitation. This is a really important conversation we are having today, the power of youth in communicating and delivering the SDGs. And I think already having this topic on the series shows how much there is interest in youth agency. So I'm really looking forward to the Q&A and to hearing your perspectives as well. And I'm also happy to see Irish Aid supporting this series and this talk in particular. I think the simple answer to this topic is obviously we are, you know, the most innovative, the youngest and the coolest generation and we are qualified to deliver SDGs but the answer is much more complex than that. And I'm gonna try to unpack that and I want to structure my keynote around three aspects that I think define youth agency during the past decade. And those are voice, power and solidarity. So if I would make a reflection on this past decade when we see people taken to the streets today across the world to demand rights, when we see the influence of social media, when we see new ways of organizing and youth led social movements. If we reflect where it all started, how it all started, it actually started in my country Tunisia 10 years ago, 28 days of protest sparked by self-immolation of Muhammad Bozizi. I'm sure you remember that picture but really fueled by years and years of high unemployment, corruption, lack of political freedoms. And then 14 of January, 2011, we ousted 23 years dictatorship. Actually I was 23 at the time and it's the only president I've ever seen in my entire life. So it was a turning point for my generation. I think we were the first to create a Facebook event not to invite you for a marriage celebration or graduation party, but to go on a protest. Basically we turned social media into a tool for social change. And we know that every revolution in history was led by young people. It always had a youth face. Back then I was on the streets. I remember the noise, I remember the silence, the tear gas, the live bullets. I was blogging, I am tiny in size with big camera. So I got arrested, I got jailed. I got deported and blacklisted later when I went to Egypt. But to sum up that moment or phase of my life, and I think by extension the youth agency back then, it would be about the struggle for voice, the struggle to be heard, the story of feeling powerless, angry, frustrated, and then really finding power in your voice to change things, to do something, to have the courage to take to the streets, to be on the front line. And I think being part of the revolution made me and many young people of my generation fearless. And it wasn't a choice for us, the millennials. It was the fact that without this change, my generation would have to be condemned in this continuous state of weighthood, waiting for adulthood, waiting for employment, for political inclusion, for social equity, for leadership, basically waiting to become. Now, after Tunisia, there was a wave of uprisings and revolutions across Africa, Egypt, Libya, in Burkina Faso, in Senegal, recently in Sudan. And usually after these acts of bravery, when youth lead positive change, the results is always a vacuum. When we think the bad guy that we kicked out is not empowered anymore, we quickly realize, oops, it's actually the whole system now. We're fighting against, it's the establishment, it's the status quo, and it's not just one individual. And usually this vacuum is hijacked by older generations who claim to be more politically savvy. And I think that's when it becomes a struggle for power. This is when we realize as young people, voice is not enough if we don't have a seat at the table. When I started traveling across the continent, supporting these youth movements, I started to see that this is actually a generational crisis. If we look at Africa right now, the average age of African leaders is 64 and the average age of the population is almost 20. It's 19.5. So we have at least 40 years of generation gap in leadership. And it seems to me that conflict on the continent is aggravated by this lack of communication between generations. We have the generation that fought for independence, the generation that built the African nation and the current youthful population really inheriting all of this inequality and all of these challenges. So even though the leaders who joined governments where they were young during independence days in the 50s and 60s, slowly over the years, the political system started to see young people as a threat or as a dangerous class of the masses who want to take over power. And on the other hand, people in power are perceived by young people as these corrupt old men overstaying, not listening to their grievances, not representative of the current needs and solutions. So there is this dichotomy and this distrust which really pushed youth out of leadership, out of governance and negotiation tables and pushed some to die in the Mediterranean, pushed others to go into violence because eventually when individuals are deprived of their political socioeconomic rights, they are more likely to feel rewarded when they join violent groups. And this marginalization that were the youngest population in the world, 65% actually of Africa is now under 30. And yet the most insecure, the most unemployed and barely surviving day in and day out, this perception of injustice really exacerbated this distrust and tension between generations. So I wanted to try to bridge this gap and turn it into a powerful space for action, particularly for the SDGs. I jumped into the belly of the beast to shake things up in the corridors of power. I became the youth envoy of a union of 55 member states. And there I think I stopped fighting to prove anything or to prove that we are demographic dividend. We deserve a seat at the table. And I really started to fight for, for institutional inclusion, for young people occupying leadership positions they deserve for treating young people as peace builders and not gun holders. And I managed to get heads of states and government to listen. When my discourse shifted to, we're not going to kick all of you out of power. I thought at some point that was the only solution, but actually that will bring a vacuum. What we actually need right now in Africa is intergenerational co-leadership. And I don't mean by that passing the torch to younger generation or passing the legacy or passing all these institutions, but I mean co-creating and reforming the system together now. So we don't fail the next generation. So we don't become products of failing systems and just continue to perpetuate them. So co-leadership really means that with wisdom and innovation we can achieve the sustainable development goals. And so I started to build intergenerational dialogues on the importance of co-leadership. And I would ask heads of state and government, can you have young people as your advisors? Can you have third or half of your cabinet young? Can you stop extending retirement age and get youth into public service? Can you allow waivers for young electoral candidates? In democratic transition, can we make sure that young people take the rightful place in leadership? Can you have young ministers actually in charge of ministry of youth because most of them are not? So really facilitating this dialogue to open those channels of communication with young people. And we even put together a report called Greater Inclusion of African Youth in Public Service and Governance. We put six case studies of African countries that actually succeeded in youth inclusion, showing the leaders that we don't need to look elsewhere in the world, we just need to look to our neighbor and see how well they are doing when they include young people, when young people co-lead with them. And they actually listened. I mean, intergenerational dialogues work. And as a result, Namibia, Chad, Ethiopia, many other countries last year appointed young ministers for the first time. Sudan appointed young female minister of youth after the revolution. Algeria is subsidizing electoral fees for youth. The AUP Security Council adopted a continental framework on youth and so on and so forth. But my proudest moment really during my term as youth envoy was to witness the collection of over 1,000 guns in Rumbak in South Sudan in voluntary disarmament. So without stigmatizing youth as perpetrators of violence. And to me, that's the biggest win because that's where we change the narrative, we change the behavior, we change the discourse and the approach to youth agency that projecting into the public imagination or rhetorical fear to justify treating young people as suspects of terrorism is not the solution. Or the collective punishment of youth through discriminatory policies is not the solution. Because this is a generation of change makers who actually revolutionized technology and who inspired new ways of citizen engagement. So we need to channel their frustration into governance, not marginalize them. And to see the small impact the past two years of intergenerational co-leadership make me believe that this has the potential to be an approach for conflict prevention. Because helping to build this relationship of trust would avoid these institutions being rejected by youth and that could prevent a long-term upsurge of violence and continuous cycle of uprisings which we've seen in 2010 when I was in the street. I see the same thing happening in Nigeria last year in the street. It's just a continuation. And I think that's why narratives about youth participation, youth agency, youth leadership are so important. We need to start asking ourselves, are we contributing to narratives of empowerment or disempowerment? There are currently I think two ways the development sector talks about young people either as beneficiary of youth development or as participants in youth led development. And it is often not clear to us whether as a group young people are portrayed as the problem or the solution. And I think bottom line, the narrative should be that youth are drivers, not subject of development. The same way the narrative about security, we need to move from youth peace and security agenda to youth peace and development agenda because when the conversation shifts to development the funding and programs can be redirected to the root causes rather than response programs actually invest in the livelihoods of young people rather than militarization. So narratives really shape policy and policies when implemented really change the lives of young people. I wanna come to the third aspect of youth agency. I think finding power in our voice is a great step. Having a seat at the table is a great step but it's not enough for change to happen. With the speed we need we only have nine years to 2030 our deadline is very close. And we need solidarity, we need collaboration, we need a lie ship. And I think my generation understands that we live in an interconnected words that the more we build on the power of solidarity the more we will be ready for the future. And maybe we understand that because we're either computer natives or internet natives. Maybe that's why all of us migrated online because we believe in a borderless words. And young people are actually the majority online. Ironically, just like we are the majority offline but offline in our countries we mostly did not create the rules. We are products of system created by others. But in the digital space is different. We create the rules and the digital is where there is no visas, the borders collapse. We can actually thrive and innovate and everything is possible with our imagination. And I think solidarity has been really tested during this pandemic. Last year throughout the peak of the pandemic during my mandate as youth envoy I listened to young people in 54 consultations. My office convened with over 22,000 youth. And we actually published a policy paper called Africa Youth Lead. And basically showcasing how African youth were using pan African solidarity and continental response to deal with the pandemic from day one. There was no thinking of this as this is my issue or this affecting me only from day one it was an issue for the continent. And many youth worked in cross border regional networks helping other youth across the continent with information, with raising awareness, with fundraising. It's just amazing because if we look closely to what happened since the outbreak of the pandemic it is the young people within ministries who carried government along. It is young people within civil society who carried society along. It is the young entrepreneurs who set up all these innovation tools. And I used to brief almost on a daily basis different stakeholders on COVID-19 impact on millions of young people who lost their jobs whose education was disrupted. But incredibly despite these hardships they faced the pandemic with such resilience and solidarity, which just reminds me of why. Why I believe in youth power. Why I dedicated my life to galvanize this collective power of young people because one hour generation unite we can make miracles and the pandemic really showed us that. And I think also the pandemic showed us that no one is safe until everyone is safe and how global we are and how our actions affect others cross borders. So if I'm not vaccinated here in Tunis it can affect the safety of anyone elsewhere. But unfortunately many global leaders failed to show and practice solidarity, but young people did not. They care about being global. They care about solving global issues with global solutions. And I think that's why young people can deliver the SDGs. That's why the SDGs need young people to deliver them because the SDGs are global. It's not an index of how each country is doing is actually about how are we all doing together. And a quick example of how youth, when they unite they can do impact is Africa Young Women Beijing Plus 25 Manifesto which I can talk more about later, but in a nutshell 1,500 young women and men came together last year in five regional consultations, developed 10 bold demands with policy outcomes that resulted in this political document, the Manifesto, they organized, mobilized, collected 10,000 signatures. And I just came back from Paris at the Generation Quality Forum where eight out of the 10 demands of this Manifesto were actually incorporated in the final negotiation of member states. I think there are many, many more examples, but I think when young people really mobilize, organize, have a seat at the table, bring their creativity, and especially teach the word and teach global leaders that our voices will only be effective if they are united, unified and collaborative. I think that's when we can talk about implementation of SDGs. So maybe just to conclude, I think our voice, our power and our solidarity is really as young people what we can do to deliver the SDGs. And I think institutions can help by one, recognizing and amplifying these youth voices, these political voices so they can be louder and they can be louder than those dogmatic, hate speech voices that are trying to bring us back. And two is bridging this generational divide and really institutionalizing intergenerational co-leadership to create this powerful space for action on the SDGs. So by 2030, we can see predominantly younger faces in leadership. And three, I think, is rethinking partnership on the SDGs because the struggle of the next decade really requires transnational solidarity. So I'll stop there and I really look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Brilliant, Tia, thank you so much. That was absolutely amazing. And I got so many questions jumping out at me, but do encourage people listening in, also please post your Q&A there so that we can have this discussion. But I am going to abuse my position right now to ask the first question, if you don't mind. I love that you brought back this word, this concept of solidarity. And I do say brought it back because when I started in this business, that's what gave me my motivation and my power. But you've said yourself, it needs to be brought back, all right, back central to the SDGs. But I suppose we had a question about it. I mean, I think Guterres actually said solidarity and multilateralism is needed now more than ever because of the COVID pandemic. And I do like to kind of just ask you from your perspective, knowing also that the pandemic we know has affected poorer countries and poorer people more than others and particularly women and girls. How has the pandemic changed your perspective or given you more inspiration? Perhaps more importantly, some people say the SDGs have lost their way because the pandemic is all consuming. Others would say it's needed now more than ever. I wonder what you would say to that. Yeah, I mean, a really interesting question because we know that we can only thrive after prices. I mean, when people say, oh, now the pandemic is the priority, what does it mean the pandemic is the priority? The pandemic mean that we have health systems to fix, education systems to fix, digital divide to bridge. The pandemic basically tells us what's going on wrong and that we are really slow in accelerating change. I don't think the pandemic here is to stop us from doing everything else and dealing with the pandemic is actually telling us that all of SDGs are intersectional and that you cannot deal with, I don't know, gender-based violence without dealing with health or productive rights without dealing with climate crisis, without dealing with displacement. It's literally the pandemic showed us how all these issues are so intersectional and so linked to each other. So I really do not understand that narrative around, even when funding shifts to the pandemic, right? So when you shift fund into the pandemic meaning you don't have enough fund to deal with emergencies and crises and that you need to take fund from our education of girls who if they are locked in their homes, they will be abused or take the money from the health system that needs to really be resilient to the current emergency. I think we run out of excuses because we always say, oh, when there is a new issue, let's shift everything, our attention, our funding, everything to that issue and forget about everything else. And we're not stopping to say, actually everything else is causing this crisis. So let's deal with all of that. So we don't have any further crises. And in terms of the aspect of solidarity, I think this is something pan African because in the history of the liberation movement, we are taught Ubuntu, which means I am because of who you are, which means my liberation is your liberation. So there is that philosophy of interconnectedness and that my action requires your action and my action affects you, your reality. And I don't think it should be something absent and then brought back and absent. I think it should be consistent. We should be in solidarity at all times. If we wanna, in the fancy words, say it's a multilateralism, okay, but what's multilateralism is actually putting our personal interests behind and putting the collective, the human race, the human family upfront. People before profit, it's putting all of these issues that should be consistently like that, not when we have a pandemic, then now we would remember, oh, we need to stand in solidarity with those who are most affected. No, I mean, people have been in refugee camps for the past two decades. People have been displaced for the past two decades. Climate change have been affecting, have been getting young women out of school actually for the past decade. Who has talked about that? So I think it's really about now taking this moment to make it an opportunity and to recognize that this is the moment for us to activate the SDGs because this is when we can show as the human family that we can have solidarity, that we can get out of this crisis together, you know? And I think that the vaccination conversation, for example, is a great testimony of that. I mean, I was in Paris just two weeks ago and I'm not vaccinated. I was in a room and I said, with all these global leaders, and I said, I'm not vaccinated. Who is not vaccinated here? And there were just four young Africans who came who raised their hand. And then I am, you know, asked to do all of these requirements and tests and confinement and all of these things. But if I had the vaccine, access to the vaccine, you wouldn't have to worry about me. You know, the moment I step into another space because you know that I am safe, you are safe, everyone is safe. And I think that's where we need to realize that when we are, when we think global, when we try to support other countries or, you know, the most vulnerable, then the most marginalized, it is to make your life better. It is actually to have for you to have peaceful, equal, more fair words. If I do, you will do because we can't live anymore in our little, tiny communities and countries. We like it or not, we are global. So we need to act like that. Yeah, and I love that. And that's why I love that term solidarity because it really brings the humanness, isn't it? The dignity of us all together. I am now gonna turn to some questions if that's okay. One from Ashlyn Levine, the Youth Engagement Officer at Goal. And I suppose it does touch on that solidarity point but very much related to education. And she says, thank you, I, of your work and for being such an inspiration. What do you think about how to integrate critical understandings of governance and public service into education systems so that young people can emerge from their school years ready and confident to participate, there I say, not just as civil society members but as global citizens. Something there around the education specifically. Yeah, I mean, absolutely 100%. I think from my personal experience, I come from civil society. I had before being the envoy eight years of activism and not really formal NGO style. I was in movement building and I was in very these loose structures of organizing. So for me, it was a huge shift. And after two years of navigating into governmental space, I am completely convinced that every young person when they got out of school or even what they're still in school, they should have some sort of internship, some sort of programs that make them understand how public service work, that make them experience how public service work and even teach us service, right? Because there is this idea that when you are in position of leadership or when you run for office is this prestigious thing and now you're completely disconnected from reality. It doesn't teach people integrity. It doesn't teach people that you're there to serve that you're actually paid to do this job that people are paying you to do this job. It's the people taxes. So I think there is a lot that we can do in school to integrate the values of service and there is a lot we can do for every young person once they continue their educational journey to experience public service. So we can really navigate these very traditional bureaucratic institution and start to disrupt them because we need to digitalize them. We need to disrupt them. And that cannot happen if young people don't go into these institutions in masses. And we're going on from that beyond education. There's a question from Michael Sullivan, presenter and producer at near FM says how can community broadcasters support this intergenerational understanding, communication and cooperation? I mean, everything starts and end with the community. And we've done a lot of these intergenerational dialogues in communities where especially in Africa you have the elders and the young you have the traditional leaders, the chiefs and the young and there is a dynamics around that. And I think what you could help to do is really facilitate that dialogue because at the end of the day, what young people ask for is access. They want access to conversation. Even here, many young people on the continent cannot access this space because 70% of Africa is offline. Many young people in the communities cannot access those spaces in conversation with the leaders, the decision makers, the elders because of whatever intersection of their gender and their status and their class and layers of marginalization. So I think what you could do really is the facilitation of those intergenerational dialogues and being able to bring the decision makers, the leaders in conversations with young people and then let young people do their magic. They will challenge them, they will put their solutions on the table and they will continue to push beyond that one-time conversation. It has to be continuous so we can really shift the narrative. And that's great. We have a question here from Valerie Duffy who's from the National Youth Council. And I know Valerie and she does exactly that to try and create these spaces for these conversations. Valerie asked this question around how we can build trans-solidarity. And I suppose related to that, I did just want to say, well, first of all, one day we're going to have to get you back to Dublin. Partly not only to meet us all here, but also to meet some of these incredible Irish-African artists that really discovered their voice, I would say, during the lockdown. I know as Docus we had the benefit of Felly Speaks, this incredible Irish-Nigerian spoken word artist do tune into Chyla who has also taken the pop scene by storm. And it just brings me that idea of how we can bring kind of art and campaigning together. Not only in Ireland, but also kind of beyond Ireland and this idea of this transnational solidarity. Again, I'm just interested from your experience, what's worked, what do you think we should be doing more of to create that transnational solidarity? Yeah, I mean, that's amazing to hear. I'm really curious to maybe we can share some links later. I'd love to hear that. So there are different aspects of this. One, I think, is young people in Africa and the African diaspora, which we have a lot of collaboration to facilitate. I think the vibrant scene of young people of African descent across Europe and their voices rising during the pandemic is incredible. And I think that's also solidarity because if we talk about, for example, digital space, right? If it's unfair for the continent, it will actually arise when everything is already, you know, went viral. Yeah, we're late to the party because everyone rises on these news and that's why we don't lead the narrative on the continent. And I feel that a lot of young people in Europe, in Ireland, could be that voice, could be that amplifier of what's happening on the continent and make that viral, make that the mainstream, not the exception. And I think, again, to the fact that we are so interconnected, a lot of the policies that happen in your country or in the European Union or in the United Nations affect what's happening in my continent, what's happening in my country. Again, I mean, sadly, global leaders kind of recognize that they are global only when they meet at the UN, you know, in UNGA and the assembly and they realize, yeah, we need to take collective decisions but they don't realize that. Yes, we are so interconnected on the ground too and every policy you decide in your parliament or in your foreign policy or in your development aid, affect also how young grassroots organizations do their work on the ground, you know, here in Tunis or in Accra or in Lusaka. So I think advocacy, collaborating on advocacy, collaborating on policy change, collaborating on campaigning as young people and we know how to do that. We master the tools of the digital space. We master the tools of organizing. We just need to be better connected. And I think like platforms like this, it has the potential to do that because many of these young people, you know, cannot meet physically in physical spaces or cannot cross in platforms. But if we manage to bring all these powerful voices together, amazing things happen. And I think that's why, for example, I started NALA Feminist Collective. I basically brought together 17 African women feminist under 40 who are young ministers, young parliamentarians, activists, artists. We have Miss Universe 2019. We have, you know, climate activists. All of these who have platforms, have following, have influence in their own spaces and they're doing amazing things. Together has the authority then, you know, to challenge. Together has the authority to then be listened to. And I think if we can do more of that as young people across borders, Europe, Africa, other continents, it would be amazing. And it would really accelerate also the way we strategize on the national level. Because a lot of, you know, a lot of, that's why even as young people, we started the blogging. A lot of the news that come out to you, it's not reflective, you know, 100% of what we live. And that's why we live tweeted the revolution because we wanted to tell our version, our own version of the story. And so the more we connect us, you will know my story. I will know your story. And then I can, you know, be more strategic. I can be more impactful in my, in the way I do my work, which affects your work eventually. I feel a pop song coming on there, as you said, live tweeted the revolution, which is, which is fantastic. Maybe I could ask you a little bit more though about the Nala feminist collective. And I'm, I am quite curious. I mean, it's 11 years on since your revolution. I'll confess also, I've never met a Pan-African feminist before. I just wonder over that period of 11 years, what does feminism now, you know, how has it helped you? But also perhaps how has it changed you? Yeah, very good question. I mean, I say I'm a Pan-African feminist because I think there is no Pan-Africanism without feminism. So my grandmothers who fought for independence and who were Pan-Africanists and believed in the liberation of our continent, they were on the frontline. And so if any man who is a Pan-Africanist who doesn't recognize that, then he's not Pan-African. So I think for me, being a Pan-African feminist, it means really we have to rise as a continent for the gender agenda on the continent. And I think like any history, there has been ups and downs, right? So there has been this rise and gains of all of these rights across, you know, these past decades. I mean, it's been 60 years since independence. But at the same time, I think when we were a Generation Equality Forum and we were reflecting, okay, what happened since 1995 when they met in Beijing and they had the declaration for action. And to me, it's like we're still suffering female genital mutilation, which they're suffering child marriage. We're still having girls getting out of school because of their periods. We're still having gender-based violence in old and in new forms in cyber harassment and, you know, during lockdowns and domestic violence and human trafficking. So it's like, yes, now we have more women leadership. Yes, now we have more women, you know, breaking barriers and breaking these stereotypes about gender roles. Yes, we have, you know, more presence and leadership, but the issues of gender equality still at the bottom of the agenda. And that's globally, that's not only in Africa, but I think in Africa it's because probably we have some of the highest numbers of, you know, FGM, child marriage and all of these issues we're dealing with. And I think also feminism needs, need to be intergenerational and need to have solidarity. Again, you know, because we need to realize that our issues are intersectional. Gender equality is an issue of climate justice as well because they are, these are the women farmers who are affected. These are the women on the coast who are affected. These are the women who are displaced. Gender-based violence needs to be an issue of peace and security and needs to be on the table of the UN Security Council. Yes, we have the women peace and security resolution, but I think until gender-based violence becomes part of the violence discourse, then people and leaders will start acting on it. Right now it's like, oh, GBV, oh, you know, the girls, oh, the women agenda, but until gender-based violence becomes violence, until we say rape is violence, FGM is violence. So when you're dealing with terrorism and violence, this is also violence. That's when I think, you know, the narrative will start shifting, the policy will start shifting. And for that to happen, we need a feminist intergenerational movement. And in terms of intergenerational, we have also a gap of generation in the feminist movement. We have issues that we are bringing up to the table as young women, as young feminists, the LGBTQI rights, the digital cyber harassment, and so on and so forth. And these are things that with the hardcore feminists of other generation, we have very tough debates around. And so I think even in the feminist movement, we need intergenerational conversations for us to move forward in solidarity and with more intergenerational power. We've got a good question in here from Valerie Malay, who I know is one of our youth SDG champions, but she asks, how can we make sure that the global youth activism space is not just for the highly educated elite youth, but for all young people so that they can be part of the movement? You're just muted there. Yes, Valerie, spot on. It is an elitist space, closed space. We see the past decade the same networks, the same voices on and on and on. And I think it's really an individual decision that you make every day as a youth activist. So in my role as the youth envoy, what I try to do is to open the space for other young women to come in, to bring the most radical voices that would never have a platform with an AU commissioner or a diplomat or ambassador to actually say their grievances, to actually participate meaningfully. So that's one, really in our role as young activists to open the space for more youth, instead of you going to five different events, nominate 10 other people to do that. And then I think the second is not make these spaces extractive of youth agency. A lot of these spaces and free consultations, you come, you bring youth, you do the recommendation and it's over. You don't hear any feedback. You see the policy paper published after six months that has nothing that you have contributed to. And then you come back next year is the same recommendation and we are in this loop. And I think we need to change that. So in our work, when we invite young people to be on the table, great, that's a step forward. Now it's not a one-time engagement. You need to come back to young people and tell them what did we do with your contribution? What is your role now in the co-creation, in the execution, in the implementation? And I think that's where we can move away from tokenism, right? When we say you're ticking boxes with young people in these meetings and these engagements and actually meaningfully engaging young people. And I think this starts from both institutions and the youth themselves. We need to recognize that in the youth space as well, we cannot, we're all gonna get out of the youth bracket, right? We cannot take the space and make it just that network space. You need to start opening the space from now. So it's diverse, so it has many voices. And the more voices we have, the more diversity we have, we can deal with issues that we can't even anticipate. But that's the issue. People think that when we exclude people, it's easier, right? Because we can just say the same thing we said last time, do the same report and that's it. But if we make the space more diverse, people will bring up things we haven't thought about and issues that we have to deal with in the future anyway. So they will actually help us prevent and deal with futuristic thinking. You need to look at diversity as something that helps your work and not as a burden or a headache to you, you know, because you don't want to do that work. I really hope that this could be an approach for across public, private, civil society, activism spaces. We need to drastically open the space. I love that idea of diversity. Also linked to that, the thing you were talking about co-creation and the thing is that gets people nervous about co-creations. You never really quite know where it goes, but we should embrace that. You know, that often is where the creativity and change can really happen. There was a question here by the current Irish-UN youth delegate, Colin McCarrick, who was asking that similar thing, what advice you would give to him to get through to decision-makers. But perhaps a little bit more specific there, as you might know, Ireland is currently on the UN Security Council. That thing that you said earlier about that 40-year gap between youth and, dare I say, people sitting around that security council. But I would say Ireland, and in particular, Ambassador Branesan, who's heading the delegate there, has been massively championing this issue of women and girls and youth, I'd say in an extraordinary way. But what advice would you give to Ireland, to the youth of Ireland, to really get through at the Security Council in these very, very difficult times? Well, first congratulations on what Ireland have been able to do so far on the council. I think, first of all, really continue to push for youth briefers on the council. I mean, when I briefed the council, and even in my capacity as youth envoy, it was the first session on African youth, and I was the first to do that. So we are in 2021, right? It needs to be normal for young people to come and brief the council on every single issue, right? It's not when it's a youth session, then we call on the youth to brief. For everything, youth are the most affected, and youth have the right, it's their legitimate right to make decisions, to make proposals, to have solutions on the table. So think about it more as who is around the table? Where is the youth briefer? I think pushing for youth to be in the UN delegations is extremely important. Having a youth delegate is so important, and the youth delegates role to really then galvanize nationally that youth constituency and bring more voices to the UN system, to the council particularly is so important. Another thing I think is on the especially women peace security and youth peace and security agenda. As I said, I truly believe we need to move to development and not only security, but also young women are kind of lost. So young women in the youth peace and security agenda, they're like, so where is the issues that are concerned young women here in this resolution? And then young women in the women peace and security agenda, they're like, where are these the issue that are concerning young women in this agenda? It seems like it's an advantage to have a foot on both, but it's actually disadvantage because then your framework is lost within the broader framework. And I hope that Island can bring that up, the intersection of YPS and WPS for young women. What does it mean? And I met a lot of young women, especially in South Sudan who would say, when I am in the youth movement, it's male dominated and I don't feel my issues are brought to the table. And when I am in the women movement, the feminist movement, also it's dominated by other generations. And I don't feel that my issues are brought to the table. So young women and girls issues are always kind of lost in between different agendas, HR, SR, YPS, WPS, all these things, but it's not clear to us as young women, the particular very specific challenges we face in this age and time, how are we tackling them? And if we can bring that to the front, if we can do some framework working around it, if we can bring young women briefers to also propose, how do they see and the policy level on the implementation level, this agenda moving forward would be great. And of course, continue to host sessions on youth, that is extremely important because the council needs to be reminded more than one time there is a resolution on youth and they're mandated to implement it at the national level and we don't see much progress with national action plans. So lastly, on the question of how youth can get to these decision making tables, we as young people need to really knock all the doors. So reach out to your local council, reach out to your mayor's office, reach out to your parliamentarian representative, reach out to the government. We really have to knock all the doors, we really have to engage, we have to be consistent, we have to remind them every time that this is what they signed up for as treaties, as resolutions that we have the right to hold them accountable. So and to do that, we need to be in masses. So it needs to be a movement, it needs to be youth led, it needs to be a collaboration of organizations to really make impact and to really get their attention. No, that's great. And I mean, I think it does kind of point out again, we've got to break down these silos that conversations happen in different spaces. And I do remember particularly around the security council, we've got to get some of these thematics into the country debates. And that means bringing the lived experience of people from those countries right to the table of the security council. But this question of silos does bring us back to the SDGs. And I know I've had several conversations with David Donahue on that. I mean, what was so powerful about it is trying to bring not only issues together but people together. There is then a question here from Leo Gill-Martin and specifically about what has to happen so that all young people embrace the SDGs, really make it part of their discourse. I will admit the SDGs as an acronym even isn't kind of that cool, although I know like I'm wearing the badge and that's kind of cool. But really, yeah, what needs to happen so that young people truly take this on that it's part of their dialogue as it were. I think the when needs to speak the language of young people. So it's not that young people are not advancing the SDGs. It's on every, if you look at every youth initiative, every young person working in the community, every young person engaging, they are advancing the SDGs already. They're just not calling it SDGs. They're not calling it SDG4 or SDG16. So I think instead of trying to make young people fit into the SDG agenda, speak the language of SDG, the UN needs to speak the language of young people. The UN needs to bring the SDGs and tell young people make out of it what you want to make out of it. Say it in your local language, say it in your own expression of art, say it in your own ways of organizing. And I think if we really manage to connect the issues that young people care about, that young people already are advancing in the community with the policy framework, then we can really shift from oh, young people are not owning the SDGs or not delivering the SDGs because they are already doing it. It's just the language framework that needs to change. And also the support and funding. I mean, honestly, we can't expect young people to volunteer for what 15 years, right? Since the MDGs, to deliver the SDGs, young people need resources, need support, need access, need platforms. So we need to institutionalize all these initiatives. It shouldn't be an ad hoc, okay? Let's bring youth in a community, talk about it, training on the SDGs. Okay, everyone know what SDG 15 and 16 is and that's it. No, we need to bring the resources to young people so it's a ripple effect. Those youth will then go to the community, make people more aware that this is a global agenda, this is what's happening and this is your right as a citizen of this country to have this delivery. So we need to have more, I would say, put money where our mouth is, like more action that is fully informed, fully funded, fully accountable. Then we can tell young people, then come to us after 10 years of doing that and tell us if the SDGs were not implemented because they will definitely be implemented. There is no other excuse. Already, if you look at youth around the world, they're doing it with the very limited resources. It's amazing that some young people with zero budget, even during the pandemic, some of the NGOs turned their offices into sensitizers, labs to make washing hands and with zero budget, with no resources, imagine if you give these innovation, the resources it needs, the supported needs, the language it understands what can happen. So I think it's a collaboration. It's not what youth can do, what the UN can do. It's actually let's sit together and let's have the language, the tools and the resources that we both agree on. Thanks, thanks. And I think that you brought up funding. In fact, we were in front of our Joint Foreign Affairs Committee today to talk about funding on ODA. And I think what was important is that we got huge support from our TDs today. They really do believe in that and they do get the funding. In fact, they went further to say, it's as much about long-term funding and particularly things for this when it's got to be transformative or when it's about getting participation, not only to be at the table, but to have the capacity and the time to really represent ideas. That takes time and it does take funding. So I think that's very important. And ODA, if I may, I just wanna say that it is really still a shame that only 7% of ODA funding goes to civil society organizations and the global south. So this strategy of ODA and where does the money go, it's we're not asking anymore of how much funding we need. Actually, with a little money, if it really goes to the people who are doing impact on the ground, it can deliver. But with a lot of money that we don't know where the rest of it goes to bureaucracy or to overhead or whatever it is, then we can't have impact. We can't have results. And it is civil society on the ground that really drives the results for ODA. So we really need to rethink the frameworks where we put government and civil society to collaborate on these ODA or traditional partners of civil society. There are huge organizations that really don't allow the young, small, youth-led organizations to also contribute and use that amount of funding to continue their work. It's something that not only one country, it's something that the whole international development need to sit down and really reframe how we look at ODA and where does the money go for civil society? Yeah, no, that's actually right. And you'll be glad to know again. I mean, it's a big topic of debate here, particularly amongst our own members. I know we've led a process, we're calling it reimagining the role of international NGOs and at the heart of that is that localization agenda. And I suppose it's really leading that thing back to this idea of co-creation and partnership. It's not an either-or, it's thought they've got more money than us. You've got to get back to that co-creation and at the heart of that has to be about trust and relationships, across borders, across age groups and all the rest. I'm afraid I think we have run out of time here and I do know these IIEA calls, it is the lunch break. So we do need to end at two o'clock. Sorry if I haven't got to all the questions, but just to assure you, I have lots of kind of really positive questions and people have been very inspired from what you have said today. I won't even try to sum it up, but I loved what you began with, those three issues of voice, power and solidarity. I'm also thrilled, as I think you said, as youth, yeah, the coolest generation. I'd like to think I'm still young, but I'd like to kind of, if you don't mind, if I can... You're so cool, Suzanne. A bit cool, you know. But truly you have inspired me today, as I'm sure you have most people on this call. Next time we must get you to Dublin. Thank you very much for your words today. Thank you to the IIEA. Thanks to everybody for tuning in today. Yeah, and we'll look forward to seeing you again sometime, IA. Thank you very much indeed, everyone. Thank you, Suzanne. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.