 Welcome everybody to the launching of the UTOX. We're very happy to be here with you and with these amazing young leaders here. The UTOX is a series of events that brings together youth leaders from different parts of the world to have conversations about the most pressing issues to piece today. The UTOX is organized by our youth advisory council that it's a group of 10 experts, youth leaders from different countries from Latin America, from Africa, Asia and the Middle East that are part of the Generation Change Fellows program. You can find more information about the Generation Change Fellows program on USIP's website. The Youth Advisory Council and the series of events also is aligned with the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security. You can follow the conversation, and you can post your questions on social media using the hashtag USIP UTOX. Remember that we also have simultaneous interpretation in Spanish and Arabic. And today I'm very happy to introduce Negar Abay, who Negar is program officer at USIP's Gender Policy and Strategy team, and she supports the institute work on women, peace and security. Dr. Abay has an extensive experience conducting research on programs on gender-based violence, women and girls empowerment and peaceful masculinities, particularly in Southern East and Asia and the Southern and East Africa, I'm sorry. So Negar, welcome to this space. Happy to have you here with us. Thank you Paula. It's a distinct pleasure for me to be a part of this conversation in which the agency of youth is centered. It goes without saying that the global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us in different ways, and sadly in many negative and disproportionate ways that are not surprising. Just as pre-existing medical conditions have rendered certain people more physically vulnerable to the virus, pre-existing social conditions like gender, racial and economic inequality have increased the harmful and uneven impact of the pandemic. Gender-based violence has increased in all its forms during the pandemic. Predominantly directed at women and girls, gender-based violence is also experienced by sexual and gender minorities as well as boys and men. Various factors during the pandemic have rendered this violence less visible and more difficult to prevent, including recurring lockdowns, constrained access to protective and social services, greater economic insecurity, and particularly in conflict settings, unchecked actions by armed actors and some cases security forces. The number of calls received from victims on helplines have risen in many countries as have fatal incidents of domestic abuse during lockdowns and reports of sexual and gender-based violence by refugee and displaced women and girls. Additionally, an estimated 64 million women across the globe lost their jobs and a total of over 800 billion in income, which further increased their vulnerability to violence. For some men, unemployment triggered abusive behaviors at home, bringing to the fore once again the need for societies to address harmful constructions of masculinity. COVID-19 infection and gender-based violence are really concurrent pandemics that exacerbate each other, yet fewer than 1% of all COVID recovery plans included measures to address gender-based violence, and women's organizations continue to receive less than 1% of bilateral aid for their programs. The impact on youth has been particularly acute. Adolescent girls have been exposed to high levels of gender-based violence during the pandemic, especially on account of being unable to attend school, the increased burden of childcare and household responsibilities, and being forced into early marriages. The pandemic has also exacerbated the risks for minors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. The production of sexual material containing minors was widely disseminated during the pandemic. There are approximately 1.3 billion youth in the world and a growing number of countries in which the majority of the population are under the age of 25. Youth have an enormous capacity for promoting and fostering peace and contributing to violence prevention efforts. With youth suffering disproportionate impact of the pandemic and risks of gender-based violence, it is more pressing than ever to meaningfully involve you in prevention, mitigation, and response programs. Youth have already demonstrated their constructive agency during the pandemic in different ways, including through innovative design and use of digital tools to advance their activism and serve excluded populations in stepping up for the next generation as mentors and educators and in forging new patterns of collaboration across traditional divides. In what I expect will be a very engaging conversation today, I hope our speakers will be able to share their own insights on the opportunities for youth involvement, how the priorities of young people can be addressed from a policy perspective, and how youth alliances can leverage global networks to improve advocacy and access to resources, specifically for gender-based violence prevention, but also for larger concerns around peacebuilding. The pandemic has in many ways been a story of lessons not learned, of injustices and inequalities we have failed to address. I personally have faith that with your generation's heightened appreciation of humanity's fundamental interconnectedness and the importance of justice to lasting peace, you will be leaders in affecting transformative change in your families, communities, and the institutions with which you engage. I turn it over now to Sofia Santi, Generation Change Fellow from Venezuela and co-chair of the USIP Youth Advisory Council, who will be moderating the panel discussion today. Over to you, Sofia. Thank you so much, Negar. Thank you to everyone that's been here listening to us from different platforms. I would like to first introduce our amazing panelists. They're all Generation Change Fellows from around the world. We have Tsukena Hamia from Morocco. She's an account manager at the Women in Governance Organization. We have Jauramires from Venezuela. He's the director at SOMOS Movement. And Zuhayla Rasie from Afghanistan. And she works at the Young Emerging Leaders Program. And last, we have Miyashan Kuhtai from South Sudan, and she's the gender advisor in the assistance mission for Africa. And I'm most excited to hear from different corners of the world, especially on how we can deepen our understanding on gender-based violence and even how can we even mitigate its consequences. So first, I would like to start this first round of questions with Tsukena. So from your perspective, to start with a global idea on the issue, how can we navigate and understand the causes and impacts of COVID-19 on different genders and how gender insensitive systems and policies magnify the risks of the gender-based violence? Thank you, Tsukena, to you. You're welcome. Thank you, Sofia. Well, thank you for the wonderful introductions. I'm really grateful to be here again with my people. It's an honor to be part of this panel. And well, good morning, good afternoon, everyone, whatever you are. So in order to answer your question, I will be talking about the internality of race and gender and how that influences gender-based violence. I will attempt to offer an African sketch within the broader landscape of COVID and gender-based violence, which is actually similar all around the world with very few contextual realities. So it's no secret that achieving gender equality is considered a priority in different African countries. And it's even entrained in the African Union Constitutive Act as a guided principle, according to which the union shall operate. It is also recognized in all the goals of the Agenda 2063 as a core zone of the AU's development agenda, for example. However, the new world order and the realities of women around the world and the world of the continent require innovative and progressive solutions to achieve this critical development goal. And we've all witnessed that in the last three years, Africa has been facing two pandemics, COVID-19 and gender-based violence. We perhaps have come up with vaccines to control the spread of COVID-19. However, none of us is immune to the gender-based violence pandemic, which has become in just a few months a global and a regional pandemic as well. And as of today, it has been proven that COVID-19 has reversed the gains many African countries have made in promoting gender equality, women empowerment, and women's rights. And here it's, and today it's fundamental to keep in mind that gender inequalities have the potential to exacerbate any outbreak. Today, it was COVID. A few years back, it was Ebola. And responses that do not incorporate gender analysis may in turn worsen inequalities. And in the context of COVID, and especially in the African continent, the impact of gender-based violence rages from immediate to long-term physical, sexual, mental, and emotional consequences, and even deaths in the most extreme circumstances. Most common forms of gender-based violence in Africa are FGM, intimate to partner violence, early and forced child marriages, gender-based and sexual violence against women and girls in conflict context, and also gender-based violence in humanitarian situations, COVID pandemic as an example. And since the outbreak of COVID, emerging data and reports have shown that all the types of violence against women and girls have intensified in all countries affected by the pandemic. For every three months, the lockdown continued. There were 15 million additional cases of gender-based violence. And just to give you an example, in the Sahel region, domestic violence, whether physical or verbal, increased from 40% before the COVID-19 crisis to over 53% during the pandemic crisis. Other countries like Tad, Senegal, Mali, recorded increases over 30%. Other Eastern African countries like Kenya, there was a significant spike in sexual offenses in many parts of the country. Rape, for example, have constituted more than 35% of all reported cases. In northern area, in northern African countries like in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, several cases of homicide have been committed since the beginning of the pandemic. And the incidents increased in the context of the lockdown, especially with murder occurring every three to four days. Another example is Tunisia, where the 87% of the calls that the Ministry of Women Affairs have implemented received reported physical violence against women and girls. So 87% of all the calls received reported violence against women and girls. And this can be explained by different factors. First, women with violence partners increasingly fight themselves, isolates from the people and resources that can help them, especially when we talk about a context of lockdown. And the pandemic has far reached an impact on harmful practices against women and girls, including the elimination of child marriage, female genital mutilation. And due to pandemic-related disruptions in prevention programs, it is expected that globally two million FGM cases could occur over the next decade that would otherwise have not been averted. Moreover, the gender-based violence survivors have experienced limited access to legal protection services. As most civil hearings and case five reception, of course, were suspended. And issuances of course orders were significantly delayed, and most legal and centers were closed, including access to help planes for both women and young girls. And as a result, if first to end, for instance, child marriage can be disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which could result in an addition of 13 million child marriages taking place that otherwise would not have occurred between 2020 and 2013. School closures intensified gender inequalities, especially for the poorest girls and young women who face a greater risk of early and forced marriage, sexual abuse, and unintended pregnancy during emergencies. The pandemic and subsequent measures to address the pandemic have disrupted the availability and accessibility of certain services for survivors of violence. Service providers from all sectors, be it government or nongovernmental, were overstretched, I would say, to maintain services to violence survivors given constraints posed by the pandemic. To give you an example, health services have always been considered like traditionally the first responders for women. And they were, through all the pandemic and especially during the lockdown, they were overwhelmed and they have shifted priorities. And they were otherwise unable to help. And in addition to this, there is the limited access to services that was restricted for survivors, especially those, especially women with unclear immigration status, sex workers, as well as persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced persons and people living with HIV. So just like my last point and what I'm trying to highlight in here is that some categories of women and girls in Africa are among the most vulnerable groups exposed to the negative impacts of pandemics in general. And the COVID pandemic claimed the lives of millions across the globe, unfortunately. But we need to keep in mind that the pandemics, this proportionate impact on women and girls, lives is threatening to reverse the hard one gains in advancing women and girls' rights and gender equality. So I think that that's mostly my regards to the question. And if there's other questions, I'd be glad to. We still have another round of questions coming up next. Thank you, Sukena, for opening up this panel. And I would like to highlight this powerful comment you made that there are two types of pandemic in Africa. And I think developing regions also suffered from that as well. And it's quite alarming, the lack of assistance to victims, not only of gender-based violence, but all of the problems that come out of it. So of course, this leads me to our next speaker, to how, as you're working on an NGO focused on defending human rights and empowering the LGBTQ plus community in a country such as Venezuela, could you share a little bit about how gender-based violence was in your community, especially in Latin America? And how did the pandemic affect it if it did whatsoever? Well, it's a pleasure to be here with you. I am so happy to be in such a significant space for you and continue to accent the realities of women and LGBTQ community. As our partner mentioned before, we live experiences proportionately the impact of the pandemic that creates all these humanitarian situations. Regarding your question, the LGBTQ community and all are being affected by the pandemic, a reduction of a considerable reduction of all their rights. We created bigger gaps to access to health services and fundamental rights such as life and safety. And in the case of Venezuela, I think that this inequality and all this systematic violence that the LGBTQ community is starts in the home, it's multiplied on the streets, in the media, in the church, in the institutions, state institutions. And from the pandemic, all that violence was multiplied and also has to do with the absence of rights. The Venezuelan state does not recognize the rights of the LGBTQ community. And to summarize it somehow, we are second-class citizens. Our fundamental rights such as right to life where they act as a justice are hindered because of the decisions of the state both by omission and act. And in the pandemic, all these inequalities and gaps were multiplied and enlarged. Like the cisgender women, the same situation in the cases of LGBTQ community, the family environment and violence was exacerbated due to the lockdown and the imposition during the pandemic. We have to say that there is a systematic lack of public policy in Venezuela. Venezuela is one of the countries with the biggest lag in the recognition of collective rights for the LGBT community. And this also occurs in a context of violence and political polarization and also happens in a humanitarian emergency condition. And we have to say it is the worst in the whole history of the American continent. Venezuela has lived in the recent years of the situation or has data or the consequences of an armed conflict without having had an armed conflict. One of the biggest migration blocks in the story. And in this context, the LGBT community has been excluded from the political response and even humanitarian response. LGBTQ community continue to be invisibilized by the policies. There is a lack or absence of official data and a systematic denial to gather data of the realities of this LGBTQ collective. Going back to women, you have to say that this pandemic has not only affected the LGBT community particularly hard, but there are also subgroups that have been impacted in a more atrocious way regarding the pandemic and humanitarian context. Specifically, transgender women, sexual worker women, women with HIV, women with disabilities or partner women are receiving a bigger part of this pandemic or humanitarian crisis and the restriction of their rights caused by the pandemic. And of course, I am also from Venezuela understand the complicity of not only having the pandemic, but the entire crisis that's affecting Venezuela. And of course, that literally just like pushes down in the list of priorities to attend gender-based violence that wasn't even indigenous in the first place. And to hear a little bit about the same context, but from a different region, I would like to know about Zuhayla. Last year, of course, Afghanistan, we all know that took center stage in the international arena. And we know, of course, that the gender dynamics significantly changed since then. So I would like to know your opinion from your expertise. How was gender-based violence perceived in your country and how it has changed since last year's events and the pandemic, of course. Thank you so much for asking the question. About violence based on gender in Afghanistan, it's always been alive in Afghanistan. And mostly with some of this violence, our women and girls in various factors have contributed to this situation. Society and culture has never accepted the presence of women in society, in Afghan society, and never accept their being. And they never accept their right as a women in my country, Afghanistan. In recent years, after the first fall of the Taliban, the growth and progress of women have been under race. And women have proven their place in society, despite gender violence, closed their ways and deprived women from many of their rights. With the arrival of COVID-19 in Afghanistan, gender violence started to raise again, more and more. In society, where poverty and war have always closed the ways to progress with the emergence of COVID-19 in the country, its rapid growth and the life of women changed again and went back a few steps. Violence based on gender has not only caused physical violence or verbal violence or sexual violence in families or in society, but also spread its negative impact in external causes in terms of COVID-19. But COVID-19, the economy of society in families falls down in its lowest possible level that it could go. And this decrease caused many women and girls to be deprived of education, their job and their progress. And it's like we can see there's overall in many different countries, but in Afghanistan, it caused, I feel it caused too much the violence to get higher in my country. And beside COVID-19, we did not decrease gender-based violence during the pandemic. We came to another crisis because of Afghanistan that Taliban took the power again and the intensity of violence based on gender increased. And according to the new laws who were enacted based on the idea of Taliban and women were put under more pressure. Schools were closed, deal freedom was taken away and they were deprived of their education, their duties and all their rights. More than COVID is still, we could not manage the pandemic in our country. We even forgot COVID, we focused on our right for women in the time of Taliban. The time that no women in Afghanistan has their right, no women can say that we have, that you are a human being and we have right, they are saying in their home with no hope, with no interest for their life, for everything that they can have. And the idea of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, it is so far to talk about that in a country like my country when it is so hard to make people understand women's rights. Violence based on gender has always taken victims in Afghanistan and there is still no proper understanding of this issue in the society. Although globally this impact has been discussed and many organizations come to Afghanistan in taking the responsibility, women themselves started fighting against it. Again, it didn't work because we are in different crises and when we want to take one of them, another one is coming. And now the idea of gender-based violence, I can say that it is so hard to conclude it in some numbers or some research. It is so hard to have an understanding of this about the gender-based violence in my country. Thank you Zahela for enlightening us on the situation in Afghanistan and of course I would like to mention or highlight what you said about the priorities of the Afghans, especially in the privation of education, that it seems to be the cost of gender-based violence but then it is also the consequence, so it looks like a never-ending cycle. So to end this round, I would like to know a little bit more about what we can do about it. So I would like to ask Nyashankutai a little bit more about the current situation of gender-based violence from what you do and with your work within Africa. Like if you have any successful cases or existing policies that are available for us to learn to try to implement it in our own communities, of course to mitigate the consequences of gender-based violence. Thank you Sophia. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all our audience and to the USIP Youth Advisory Council and I'm grateful to be here. Thank you for having me. Before I dive into provisions and policies that exist within South Sudan on gender-based violence, I want to just give a background on how issues of GBV, especially in a country like South Sudan whereby women and girls have been affected for decades in relations to gender-based violence and different types of gender-based violence, whether sexual, emotional, physical, name it, still people think that when it comes to issues of gender-based violence, it should only be about women and girls and not putting in mind that issues of gender-based violence affect both genders and looking at a patriarchal society with harmful cultural practices like South Sudan, it is still difficult for men and boys to come out and talk about issues of sexual gender-based violence that affected them directly. Having said that I will dive into policies and existing provisions that are in South Sudan on issues of gender-based violence in the South Sudan constitution under part two and under the Bill of Rights, there is the right of life, human dignity and also there is the right of women and right of children and that falls also under issues of GBV. There is also a provision on the Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedures that highlights GBV and other sexual violence related crime punishment in line with that and for that the South Sudan GBV Court has been inaugurated during the 16 days of activism on December 3rd 2020 by the judiciary of South Sudan with support of different UN agencies and civil society with aim of speeding cases of GBV and that's a good step in line with the policies that are existing on the ground on issues of gender-based violence. We have the National Action Plan for the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in South Sudan and there is one pillar that is the Protection Pillar focuses more on gender-based violence and issues of gender-based violence and the National Action Plan has been passed by the South Sudan Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare in 2015 and it was a five-year national action plan. We have two GBV policies or GBV bills that on the pipeline already in South Sudan so far we have the anti-GBV bill with the purpose of reforming and consolidating and also harmonizing laws and offenses that relates to GBV including domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, harassment, other harmful cultural practices as well as child protection. We also have the family law and it's also on the pipeline and it's being discussed and it's awaiting approval and it deals directly with issues that are related to families especially things like male guardianship over women, issues of dowry, bright prize, citizenship, nationality and also the impact of male authority in marriages, divorce, management of marital properties as well as child custody and maintenance knowing that in South Sudan for example as a woman and as a mother when you are traveling you have to get a consent from the father and if the father is not around you have to get a consent from an uncle or a male from the brother to your partner and he has to be a male and these are some of the things that the family law is looking into tackle because also women have rights you know to move freely with their children within the country. Another thing is inheritance because under the harmful cultural practices we have issues like wife inheritance for example if your husband passed on you are being inherited by another family member in which that leads to a lot of issues and it is categorized under gender-based violence. The status of the family law right now in South Sudan there is a steering committee all that has been in place and it is being hated by the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare as well as other civil society organizations and there are consultations that are already in place. So in brief that is all about the current policies that exist in South Sudan on gender-based violence. Thank you and back to you Sophia. Thank you and I really want to especially thank you for highlighting that this issue affects everyone it's a matter that includes all genders not necessarily girls and women but also men of course and of course to not exclude all the actors I would like to further the discussion on the prevention action aspect of gender-based violence especially on a global skill so I'll jump back to Sikena. What recommendations can you give your audience in different platforms beyond laws but also for different actors in civil society organizations like local governments or other form of actors that can help mitigate the consequences of gender-based violence? Thank you Sophia. I think that one of the very first elements I would think of is the the key the key gaps and responses and this could include for instance the data inadequacy and weak monitoring and evaluation systems because this is this is one of the things that we struggled with like during during the pandemic is the almost absence to non-existence numbers and data about gender-based violence. I would also I would also like include the gaps in gender-based violence may stream in during humanitarian crises and such as COVID-19. I think that I think that's one of the one of the panelists mentioned earlier at the very beginning of the panel the the the the engagement of culture and religious institutions and sometimes there is like an inadequate male engagement of those like figures who are usually very well respected within their their community their local community that is also like a weak the weak institutional capacity that it's not it's not like strong enough to first support women and young people and second which is even for me like more important than just supporting women and youth which is like implementing and providing those communities with tools that would ensure the continuity of the projects of the initiatives. There is also the the the challenge of the of the of the binary legal systems and in different regions in the continents. There is also the gap the gap between high-level policies and awareness on the ground so for any one of us who have the chance before to work on the field with NGOs and then work for continental or regional organizations like who we all went through and lived and experienced firsthand this disconnect between what happens in the in the ground and what has been and what is being discussed in the in the rooms so there is this too there is also the the weak accountability mechanisms and one last point I would I would add also is the sometimes the inadequate domestication and implementation of international regional and national instruments and laws on gender-based violence it doesn't matter if it if it was successful like in a in a certain region or a certain country that it will be successful and and or fit into the African or regional like a local context and we we need to make sure that that that's that the the policies are tailored to meet the need of the community the need of the people and to meet their expectations and finally there is only one last thing I would I would love to add is that we can all agree especially for fellows from Africa that when we talk sometimes about programs and about especially programs that tackle the women peace and security youth peace and security we always talk about funds but for all those who have the chance to work in in in Africa like on the field I'm sure that they all have the strong belief that Africa is not poor sometimes certain agents are being poorly managed but we have the resources we have the the the the the the financial resources we have the human resources to make a change to be the change you want to see in the continent and maybe it's time to stop talking about youth's peace and security women in peace and security and start funding and supporting in a meaningful tangible and and concrete way those agents and those initiatives because at the end of the day gender inequality causes violence against women and girls and then violence against women and girls affects everyone and impedes development and development is everyone's concerns no matter you no matter what your gender is so I think that's all I have to say and and I would I'm I'm so interested in in in in learning more from the other fellows on this on this question thank you Sakina um I would also like to highlight what you mentioned of the lake of data affects vulnerable groups and the generalization of their situation really makes it difficult for the assistance to be more you know effective and especially in in locations that are not necessarily very important or relevant for governments to or to you know provide more assistance and and you know some of the issue especially addressed the issue of gender-based violence so this is something that has been happening in different regions and I believe in every country of our panelists so I would like to turn to how to learn a little bit more about what especially us youth we can do in conflicted countries where gender-based violence is not in the agenda but many people depend on the assistance provided by civil society organizations because the government doesn't or is not able to to provide assistance so I would like to know your opinion on the matter how can we attend or you know mitigate the consequences of gender based violence from the civil society organizations when the government does not support our activities how are you there okay I think we have a little bit of a technical issue so let's go with Suheila it's a little bit similar to the question that I had on you but it's a little bit on the other side of the extreme of the question so how can we empower vulnerable communities to mitigate gender-based violence like what strategies in your experience especially on education how can we prevent gender-based violence empowering the citizens answer your question it is not about just youth it is about all women and girls who are in this situation according to what I was doing for girl and women and what I'm doing now we need to raise their voices we need to share their stories about what how gender-based violence affect them and how it caused them to be silent and they cannot talk about themselves so here we should be their voice besides this we need other organizations related organizations for working in this food they should come together and find the problems and find a specific policy to end this violence especially in communities like Afghanistan when we are talking about Afghanistan again as I mentioned again there is no one save about their right in Afghanistan I'm talking about all women and girls in Afghanistan so the the way that I can do is that I can share their stories and show it to world that they need your help please support them in any way that is possible and in this time that most of organizations they are just talking about women right in Afghanistan so there is no action yet but we are in in the time to go for actions and never put them behind and go for this that at least they can go for their education and they have their basic rights and with these rights we can go further for more powerful steps thank you um and of course I think something that we can all agree is that education is pretty much the key to solving almost all issues uh in in the world um so I now that we have Hal back I would like to go back to to ask to ask him his question regarding how can we empower civil society organizations to provide and continue to provide this assistance to victims of gender-based violence or at least all actors involved in gender-based violence considering countries that do not necessarily have the support of the government on the matter so how if you can listen to us please go thank you Sofia first of all I think we would have to continue strengthening our spaces to have a more public incidence continue to strengthen our activism networks continue to work on media social networks so that we can strengthen our communities to demand this equality of rights civil rights and continue to build this uh equality movement that continues to give a voice to people or groups that are sub-represented even within our own communities I think that one of the affirmative actions that we've had in Venezuela during 2021 was the creation of the LGBT community community center that was one of the proposals of our organization it is the first and only community center that exists in Venezuela and it was born in the middle of amidst a diversity not just the humanitarian crisis but also within the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic and it also tells us how these movements have to evolve almost was born as a movement here to making people uncomfortable but this humanitarian context and the economic conditions that exist in Venezuela forces to rethink the movement and organize protective measures and the company measures for the people from the LGBT community that are in the condition of inequality this community center was born in 2019 as I was saying it's up to the state the only center that exists in the country and it offers social social attention and a complete series of networks and support groups for the trans community and within serious implications that we had we had to open our in-house thing and food program for the LGBT community this has been done with a very limited funds in the context of the organization and chosen in in Venezuela is adverse there's a criminalization from the state for these NGOs and there are limitations but there's the access to funds and that they they require registration for these organizations in the public entities or even the possibility of opening bank accounts in dollars so all these limitations hinder the reception of funds and and so far there's an awareness within the donors to besten these resources to continue protecting the community of Venezuela and in all that humanitarian crisis context is one context that the rights of the LGBT community is another context but the collective of LGBT and the women revived this this humanitarian crisis in a different way and this LGBT community center experience I like to tell it because I think it can show in some way that activism works that when communities are organized and focused and protecting ourselves there is the possibility of building impressive things I also believe and and I joined this call to continue to gather data of the reality of women's sales trends and of the LGBT community and the impact that violence have had in our lives and lastly I believe that a fundamental proposal for all the region is to continue to democratize feminism that men continue to promote or hand over the power so that women can have more participation and that way we can democratize and reach women especially suppressed women that the feminism agenda isn't only in the feminism of space heterosexual white women but rather build an agenda for women of racial diversity with disabilities with farmer women women in migration mobility and continue to build an agenda that continues to include women and I would like to add what one of our colleagues was saying regarding the need of feminism reach men not just for men to waive feminism as a flag but also for feminism to release us from all these oppressions of this patriarchal system of all the impact that this patriarchal system has in the lives of men and so that men can understand how we can help build a world where women have a place and power is distributed equally among all thank you how and I want to highlight two points that you mentioned the first one is to bring awareness to the international community especially the donors to correctly allocate funds to organizations and projects that are going to create the most meaningful impact in communities and of course also to democratize feminism that's a very interesting sentence that you mentioned and I think that's something that we can all implement in our own work to finalize this panel before I continue with our last question I would like to remind everyone that's listening to us that you can ask questions using the hashtag USIP Youth Talks in all the different platforms that we're presenting this session so please we have a few minutes left but we would like to answer as many questions as possible so to end this session I would like to go back to Ms. Tai of course what what how was mentioning about you know growing our own strengthening networks I think that's also very important to strengthen our own selves and you know continue our education like attending sessions like this so from the Youth Advisory Council and USIP we work to empower youth and always bring their voice to the center of these types of issues hence this event so I would like to ask you from your experience where role can youth specifically youth can play to addressing gender-based violence in order to at least increase our knowledge of it and for the next generations to become aware of this issue thank you Sophia just to say youth are creative youth are talented and smarts when it comes to using technology when it comes to using platforms without funding they're making change in their communities they're raising awareness through different social media platforms one big recommendation is that youth need to be more critical and more loud especially when it comes to raising awareness and leading conversations on GBV I'll give an example of South Sudan girls breaking the silence and that was a hashtag that went viral in the year 2020 where so many South Sudanese girls for the first time spoke about being sexually violated by perpetrators who have not been far who are family members uncles people who are well-known neighbors and so forth and it took one person to come out and then the rest of the girls started coming out and most of these girls were no longer living in South Sudan anymore they were living in different continents and as a result so many young South Sudanese got inspired and they started talking and speaking up about this so I think sorry one of the role that the youth can play because when it comes to issues of gender-based violence and sexual gender-based violence youth are the most affected category so they have to speak up by speaking up so many perpetrators will be afraid of committing the act and for that issues of gender-based violence will reduce also when it comes to issues of funding and resources youth projects in different organizations are being given limited funding and youth projects are not being prioritized while there are some other things or some other emergency situations that looks more urgent than funding youth issues and for me I think youth are the leaders of today and not tomorrow and if you are preparing someone for leadership you need to give that person the right you know resources that they need capacitate them well enough in order for them to be able to talk to take that role so I call out youth to be able to use existing platforms there in different organizations by asking these organizations that they work for to increase youth funding and to make sure that youth projects are being prioritized. Another recommendation also is that for youth to for example we have generation change fellows these are different youth we have youth advisory council and within USIP there are other departments that deal directly with issues of GBV for example we have the department of gender some of the youth who are already within the USIP network can build on into that by asking to have access to these departments where they can have you know frameworks they can have manuals training guides where they can be able to add that into the existing knowledge that they have and also they take it to the to the field and to the grassroots level in order for other people also to benefit from all that. Another thing also is the power of awareness and campaigning especially at the grassroots level youth can use different platforms including radio stations for some remote areas at the grassroots where there is no access to phone or network services to raise awareness and make sure that this awareness raising is continuous even if the youth are no longer on the ground it will be upon the community to take over the raising of awareness of issues of gender-based violence also there is power in campaigning and hashtags youth can use platform to campaign and also send messages across different platforms in relation to GBV and make things happen so in conclusion I would like to say that however much youth are creative however much youth have you know access to their own phones have access to internet and they know how to use it perfectly it's still youth they need support from different donor organizations from different institutions to building and tapping into their talents and also to capacitate them and also to provide them with the right resources and funding in order for them to be able to excel and also fight issues of GBV and also achieve the results that are expected thank you and over to you Sofia thank you sadly we only have two minutes left for the session we had a few questions that our audience wanted to ask you but we'll make sure to answer them in different formats through the youth advisory council so thank you all the panelists and thank you for the audience for listening to us now I'll throw it back to Paula thank you all I just wanted to say thank you as Sofia and thank you Sofia for moderating this panel panel as well and everything that you raise here it's very valuable and it's also help us as well like shape the work that we're doing I would just wanted to highlight what you mentioned that it's important that we are not generalizing the WPS agenda the YPS agenda because we cannot in in quotes categorized like youth or women in the same bucket like there are different identities and there are some that are more vulnerable and attached to that is that we need to continue to challenge the binary systems that are also excluding different genders like for example how was mentioning in Venezuela there is an importance and they're like I what I heard is that there's an importance of not only talking about a youth peace and security women peace and security but also like investing and try to find the the ways the mechanisms to to to support those initiatives especially those who like the funding systems the bank the bank systems are more challenging because they're like a lot of limitations so funders and institutions needs to continue thinking about this and thinking about like including and thinking like these different people that have more challenges as you were mentioning migrants transgender people from rural communities who have less access and that's a that's a struggle that we need to really have in mind we're working on these two genders so I really want to thank us ip youth advisory council the gender policy strategy team the usip events public affairs and communication our a b team to for making this event possible and you can continue the conversation on social media by using usip youth talks the hashtag usip youth talks thank you so much Sofia Suhala, Sukeina and Negar and see you in the next youth talks