 Hello, and welcome to The Peace Frequency, a podcast series from the United States Institute of Peace that taps into the stories of people across the globe who are making peace possible and finding ways to create a world free of violent conflict. I'm your host, Darren Cambridge, and I'm also a senior program officer at USIP's Center for Applied Conflict Transformation. And we are broadcasting live from USIP headquarters in Washington, D.C. today. We're joining folks online through video and audio. And this is a special episode and we're looking at a report that was just released called Integrating UNSCR, UN Security Council Resolution 2250, Youth and Religious Leaders Engaging for Peace. And my guests for today's podcast are the authors of this amazing and important report. So first we have Aubrey Cox. She is a senior program specialist here at USIP, and she manages the Generation Change Fellows Program, which works with young leaders across the globe to foster collaboration, build resilience, and strengthen capacity as they transform local communities. So Aubrey, thanks for being on the show. Next to her we have Imrana Alhajibuba, who at the age of 18 years old founded the Youth Coalition Against Terrorism, a volunteer-based youth-led organization in northern Nigeria, working to unite youth against violent extremism through counter-radicalization peace education programs in schools and villages. He's also a Generation Change Fellow. And you're joining us, you're from Nigeria, but you were just spending some time in hot Arizona. Is that correct? And now you're in this nice cold room with us today. So thanks for being with us. And finally we have Melissa Nozel, who is a senior program specialist also here at USIP, focusing on religion and inclusive society. So Melissa, thanks for being on the show with us today. And thanks to all of you for the report. Like I said, it's fascinating, it's important, it's timely, and thank you just in general for the peacebuilding work that you all have been doing, and we're going to delve into that today during the show. And for our viewing audience, thanks for tuning in. We are ready to take your questions and your comments during the show. We are using the hashtag Youth Religion Peace. So if you have any questions or you have any comments that you want to share with our guests over the next 45 minutes, please tweet them to us using that hashtag. Again, it's Youth Religion Peace. And then I would love to bring in those questions into the conversation. So with that, let's get this party started. One thing that immediately pops out in the report that you all wrote was a statement that said young people feel like they're at a make it or break it point in their life. And the definition that you provide for youth is anyone between the ages of 18 and 35, maybe we can fudge that a little bit, maybe earlier as well, 12, 13, 14. And so I thought to myself, did I feel like that when I was a young person? So my question to all of you is, did you feel like as a young person at various ages that you were making decisions that felt like they were make it or break it decisions? And what did that feel like and what was that moment? Melissa, why don't we start with you? Sure, yes, absolutely. It was in certain ways a challenging time. There were a lot of different pressures when I was growing up from different areas, including self-imposed pressures. And where did you grow up? I grew up in upstate New York and Ithaca, New York. But that included decisions on where to go to college, how my grades were, and including study abroad. Should I study abroad? What impact would it have? Where should I go abroad? And I ended up studying both in Europe and in India at different points, which were very different experiences and ended up being very formative. But had I not gone abroad, I think I would have turned out differently as well. Definitely, definitely. And Marana, what about you? Okay, I think I faced some similar issues, but like or like of Melissa, that she even has option of where to go or something. What I faced actually is even thinking of getting admission. In Nigeria, like we have such a competitive system where you write a university entrance exam and you are not sure of which course you actually get. So my first admission was in adult education. I was admitted for continued education. And I don't like the course totally. So I faced such kind of issues. And when you have parents that believe like so much like, no, this is something that you can just do it. Course does not matter or something. But at the end I have to change after the first year to study political science, which is my first stress in the university. So I faced this issue and I'm much more happy that I take the right decision now. Interesting, wonderful. What about you, Aubrey? Thinking back, I remember my peer group having an enormous influence on what I did, what I thought, how I felt about certain things. And I played a lot of sports growing up. And so I ended up spending a lot of time with my teammates, but also coaches and who became mentors. And I think that those people were really positive influences on me, looking forward and kind of in terms of the direction I took, but also my behavior in the moment. And so I think looking back at the time, I didn't realize what, how important kind of my peers were as influencers. But looking back, they definitely played a key role in shaping my trajectory. Yeah, one thing I think about working with young people, and what's so fascinating about working with teenagers in high school and then in the college is that it's around that age where this sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice really start to settle in. They start to comprehend things that they see in the world and they start to take a stand against it. And sometimes maybe it's not 100% super informed, but they really start to develop that sense of justice. Has that been your experience either as a young person, yourself growing up, or with the young people that you've worked with, do you feel like there's that sense of, wow, the coming of age is in part noticing injustice or something that's wrong with the world and then immediately wanting to do something about it or say something about it and be forceful about it? Emrana, what about you? I think personally this is something that happened to me. I come from a region that faced a lot of skill-tea challenges. That is the hotspot of the Bocaram insurgency and the conflict affected me directly. Two of my family members have been victims of a bomb blast during one of the several attacks. My neighbor and his father were murdered and personally I have encountered with Bocaram terrorists. So such kind of horrific incidences had not fully made the task to do something. At that age when I started, I was just a teenager, at the age of 17 when I just started university, but that feeling, that something, that urge of me to do something inspired me to do so many things and I have a lot of friends that have that same stories. Friends I meet during the Generation Change program through Mandela Washington Fellowship, they all share the same stories coming from communities that face a lot of challenges and they think they have to do something about it. You mentioned the Generation Change program. Could you tell us, Aubrey, a little bit about what that program is and the kinds of young people that participate in it? Yeah, absolutely. So the Generation Change Fellows program is a youth program at USIP that engages young people who have founded or managed youth-led peace-building organizations. So like in Marana, for example. And it becomes a community of practice where young people can come together to strengthen their capacity and conflict management, leadership skills also, and prejudice awareness and reduction. And then also to collaborate, to support each other as they continue to implement this really important work that comes with a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties. And so you working with youth here at USIP and the Generation Change program, and then Melissa, you're working with religion and inclusive societies and that part of USIP's work. And then obviously bringing Marana into this, put together this special report. Could you let us know a little bit about how that connection came to be? Why did you start working with the religion program and how did the idea for this report come about? Melissa? Sure, so I would say as background before we thought about doing this particular report, Aubrey and I collaborated with our respective teams on a program in collaboration with the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was a youth exchange about a little over a year ago and Marana was one of our participants. So we were already realizing through that experience, through the stories of the youth participants, through the engagement with His Holiness the Dalai Lama that there was a real gap in the engagement between youth and religious actors in various ways and that there was a need in the fields to be exploring it a bit deeper. And so Aubrey and I were already noodling a little bit how we might collaborate moving forward, but then one of our partners reached out to us about the call from the UN for thematic papers on the implementation of UNSCR 2250 and so it seemed like a natural space for us to begin to think more critically about the engagement between youth and religious actors in peace building. That's great. How can people watching get this report? Where can they find it? So it's available on www.usip.org, which is the USIP website. It will also be available on youth4peace.org attached as a thematic side paper to the upcoming study progress study on youth peace and security. Okay, okay, great. So another thing I learned from the report, which I found fascinating is that 80% of the world identifies as religious. Maybe I shouldn't have found that surprising. I myself did not grow up in any particular faith tradition, so maybe that's why it seems a bit foreign to me, but I was curious for the three of you, if you identify with any faith tradition or religion and if so, how that has shaped or impacted your life in any way. Aubrey, let's start with you. Sure. So I grew up in Oklahoma, which as some of you might know, is kind of in the Bible Belt of the United States in the South. And so I grew up with the church being kind of an integral part of the community, it being not only a place for worship, but also a place to socialize and to meet people and kind of just a node for the community. And so I grew up with religion being very integrated into kind of civil society or charity work or peace building work now that looking back. But then I moved away to a place that was more secular and so I had to kind of grapple with what did I find really valuable about that experience of growing up in a community where the church is so important? What can I take with me? What ways will I apply that to my life? And it kind of resulted in an appreciation for Christianity and the work that the church will do, but then also recognizing that Islam and Buddhism also and their institutions attached also do great work that support peace, that support development and kind of community cohesion. That's great. Marana, what about you? I come from Nigeria, which is a very religious country. We have like two main religions, Islam and Christianity and I happen to be a Muslim from a very conservative Muslim country, but I also have the opportunity to meet Christians in schools. I think when I was in the university for three years, I stayed with all Christians in the room. I was the only Muslim, so I get to know about Christians, the religion and this also impacted to me like positively because in Nigeria, we are a kind of divided where the Muslims are in the North, are dominantly in the North and the Christians are in the South. But through that interaction, I learned a lot from Christians that actually most of the teachings are similar. They are all calling for peace. They are all calling for unity and that's actually shaped my life and it helps me a lot in my work. So let's go on that a little bit. So you were only one Muslim living amongst many Christians. What was that initial experience like when you found yourself in that situation? I remember the first day when I resumed in school, like when I entered the room, I was like, is that actually my room? Because when I look around, we are six in the room, it's a big dome and all there are Christians and they're also a kind of big- How did you know they were all Christians? Like when I entered the room, I say salamualaikum because that is the main Muslim greeting because I studied in Meduguli, which is Muslim-dominated country and they were like, no one can answer that. They all say, okay, you are welcome. And then later on when I introduced my name, my name is Imranah. What is your names? When they mention the names, they are all like a bit Christian names not that familiar Muslim name. But they welcome me. Okay, you are welcome. But they feel a little bit uncomfortable as well and I feel uncomfortable. Maybe they don't have that experience. But before we finish that year, we all learn a lot. We eat together, we cook together. Then that bond actually changed their perception about Islam too. They said they learn a lot from me and also learn a lot from them. So the second year when I applied for accommodation, I even choose intentionally to stay with other, select like those I want to stay with. And that actually helped me a lot. That's a great, it's a good story. Melissa, what about you? I was raised Catholic. Going to church most Sundays, I went through all the sacraments. And I would say that I am more culturally Catholic than anything else now for me personally at the moment. What does that mean? That I appreciate some of the experiences of the church. And lately, if I go to church, it would be to the Episcopal church and the high mass with the pomp and circumstance. It's the music that's familiar to me. It's the ritualistic aspects of it. But that's not necessarily the only aspect of religions that I appreciate. And it was in college that I, in particular, my study abroad experience in India that made me realize that at least as I understand it, there are many religions in the world that are ways of explaining and answering questions that all kind of lead to the same thing. And at the same time, religion, whether directly or indirectly, plays a huge role in many of the decisions that are made around the world, including private decisions of world leaders that they won't necessarily be talking about the religious inference that might be informing their decisions. But at the same time, it may have some sort of a role in the back of their mind in how they process something or even just their moral compass. Yeah, certainly, certainly. Well, thank you for sharing these stories, a little insight into your personal lives. I appreciate that. We're gonna dive into some of the challenging content of the report. And I wanna remind our viewing audience that if you have any questions or comments, you can tweet them to us using the hashtag youth religion peace and we'll bring them into the conversation. So we look forward to that. The first thing I wanted to bring up in the report was that the statement was made that most of the most violent conflicts in the world are in countries that have a high youth population or the most youthful countries. And I think this is a conversation that has been had for many, many years now. But I wanna hear from the three of you about why you think that is. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out why is it that the most violent conflicts are in countries that have the largest youth populations. Help us make sense of that. Imran, do you have any ideas about how we can make sense of that statistic? In Nigeria, I think Nigeria is one of the countries that has such a huge number of young people. We have about 30 million youth in Nigeria and most of these young people are unemployed. So to me it's not just the population that matters, it's the opportunities, access to education, to employment opportunities, it's difficult to get. So that is why most of these young people are susceptible to a lot of crimes, armed robbery, kidnappings, terrorism, because they don't have a kind of hope. When you try to get admission in a school, it's difficult for you to get. And when you finish school, no employment opportunities, and there are a lot of influence from friends like telling you there are alternative sources of income. Maybe you can join gangs or something. So that is why most of the countries with youth populations, they have a lot of such kind of security issues. Okay, so lack of opportunities is kind of what your experience has been, is that they get an education, they want to pursue something that can provide them an income and there's just nothing there. So they go to activities that are violent or illegal. Aubrey, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think in addition to what Marana mentioned, I think inclusion plays a big role in that or in this case, exclusion. And many of the countries that are affected by violent conflict, 70% of the population is under the age of 35. And when 75 or 70% of the population doesn't have access to decision-making or doesn't have access to participation in government or in civil society, that fuels grievances. And I think when only a few elite rule the country and 70% of the youth or the population are youth and they don't have access to certain resources or opportunities, I think it's kind of a recipe for grievances at least to start bubbling up. So I want to also talk about the definition of youth. I think the term youth is defined differently in different parts of the world and different countries. As I mentioned earlier, the report, you define youth as between ages of 18 and 35. I want to push on that a little bit. I don't want to kick it higher. Like I said, I just turned 36, I guess no longer a young person. But I'm also thinking about young folks who are 12 to 18. And like we were talking about earlier, such a pivotal moment in someone's life where they're starting to make sense of the world, develop a sense of right and wrong. And let's be honest, in many parts of the world, by the time you're 13, 14, 15, you've had some serious life experiences. You may already have children, birth the child, you may already be married, you may have already engaged in some type of violent act, or on the other side of that, you may already be part of an amazing peace building program. So I'm wondering how you all grapple with the definition of youth when it comes to who you work with with your respective organizations, who you reach out to, who you partner with, who do you include in these programs? Do you, are you hard, fast at cutting it off that at 18 and anyone under the age of 18 can't be a part of it, or is it flexible for the reasons I just mentioned? Melissa. Sure, I think it's context specific, and it varies country to community to community. So, and this is based off of conversations that I've had with colleagues here and in the fields that it's, there are different rites of passage, different signs of coming of age. So it really, it can vary, and I think that there is some flexibility with that definition at the same time when you're looking at shaping a program, it helps to have something solid to define. Yeah. And Rhonda, what about you and your work? Like I said earlier, you started the Coalition for Youth Against Terrorism. Is that correct? Yes. When you were 18 years old. But obviously you were, if you found it at 18, you were obviously doing things leading up to that before you were 18. Can you give us a sense of some of the things that you were working on before you were 18 years old? Yes, I think I started volunteer work at LEH, I think right from primary school. I do like some kind of volunteer work with local communities attending programs during weekends. And when I was 14 years old, I started organizing a kind of lessons during vacation for primary school students. And sometimes even my colleagues, like those who are in the same class with, I teach them like mathematics, English and basic sciences during vacation. So I think I started this kind of community work at LEH and that helped me get a lot of experience even when I started the organization. That's great. And how old are you now? So you found it when you were 18, but then how old are you now? I am 24, I will be 25 on 6th August. So to the express August, I'll be celebrating my birthday in the U.S. Excellent, excellent. Happy early birthday, that's great, that's great. And then Aubrey, generation change fellows, you use that definition 18 to 35 in terms of who can be part of the program? We do. And we had, when we were writing this report, we went back and forth for a while because the U.N. definition is actually cut off at 29 and I believe goes down to 15. So even within kind of the youth and peace building sector, there's some differences in definition. We use, for the generation change fellows program, we use 18 to 35 because as Melissa mentioned in a lot of the contexts, the coming to age is a bit later than say in the United States where I kind of think of the age youth of capping out at like 22, 23. But so in the fellowship program, because we target youth who have kind of established themselves and established youth led organizations, we tend to start at least 18 because for the reasons that Marana said, they've kind of gained skills, they're already leaders in their communities. And then we go up to 35 because that allows some of our older fellows to do a lot of peer-to-peer mentoring, which is a kind of a key component to the program. Okay, that makes sense, that makes sense. So Aubrey, you mentioned earlier about the importance of inclusion of young people in government and civil society. And so I want to turn now to UN Security Council Resolution 2250. Could you explain to us what that resolution is about? What's the spirit of the resolution? And how has it changed or impacted peace building and peace efforts? So the Security Council Resolution 2250, which is Youth Peace Security is the title, was adopted about a year and a half ago in December 2015. And the aim of the resolution was really to shift a narrative about the role of youth in peace and security. Kind of historically, youth can be, have been seen as either perpetrators of violence or victims of violence, but they aren't talked about as active agents for positive change or agents to build peace or improve security. So this resolution aims to kind of shift that narrative and it calls member states to really focus on including youth in decision making, in partnerships for peace and security efforts. There are actually five pillars that it talks about. Ways that youth can be integrated into peace and security work. And what are those five pillars? Well, off the top of my head. Participation, partnership, protection, prevention and reintegration, DDR. Okay. So when you have a UN Security Council Resolution like this, how does that statement, how does that resolution then trickle down into what people are actually doing to achieve peace? Right, which is the most important part. Like you get this fancy document that the Security Council approved, but then what? So the first thing that the resolution called for was an evidence-based progress study on youth peace and security. So there's a steering committee that's putting that together and this paper is actually USIP's contribution to that study to provide evidence that engaging youth in peace and security is already happening, that youth are leading peace and security organizations, that it is a cost-effective way to prevent violent conflict. And all of this evidence that's being gathered will make the case that youth are critical partners and it gives some legitimacy to the youth that are already doing this work. If the United Nations is now backing them saying these are critical, incredible partners and asking the member states, the local governments to consider them to be those partners. Okay, okay, great. And so let's turn a little bit about the partnership. So the kind of impetus behind this report is youth and young leaders partnering with religious leaders to achieve peace. Melissa, we've talked a bit about what the definition is of young people and how it differs across the world and context-specific. Could you give us a definition of what we mean when we say religious leaders and what's the difference between a traditional religious leader and a non-traditional religious leader? Yes, so we've had many conversations here about how we define religious leaders, religious actors and the challenge has been to come up with a term that is also comprehensive and really reflects not just those who are formally trained as clerics, for example, but also includes anyone who is influenced by or influences the religious space. So that can include men, women and youth but it can include any lay religious leaders or not leader too. So someone in a community whose decisions may be influential in different ways. For example, government representative in the security sector, a mother who may be communicating messages, for example, a mother to her children and appropriate behavior on education and using a religious lens or religious framework. So here we talk about working with religious actors, ideas and institutions and it's important when we're engaging the religious sector in peace building to be looking at it more holistically rather than siloing it and saying just the religious leaders who we joke about only working with the men with the big hats and the beards and we don't want to only be working with them, it's important to engage the formally trained clerics but they do often tend to be male and often older and it's important that you're recognizing that religious actors are more than that. And so when we're looking, we're talking about religious youth leaders. Imranah, I think we would consider you one, obviously. Again, the work you're doing is amazing and actually are you on Twitter? Yes, I'm one. What is your Twitter handle so that the folks are? At Bubba Imranah. At Bubba Imranah, okay. And if you just Google Imranah al-Hajibuba you're gonna see all sorts of articles about the amazing work that he's done and how his work has been recognized. So I encourage everyone to follow him on Instagram, sorry, on Twitter but also Google him and learn more about his work. Who are some other religious youth leaders that you're aware of in Nigeria or around the world that you're familiar with or you've worked with? Yes, there are a lot of them. Actually they are all doing impressive work but some like what I've mentioned are like we have Harry Kabore, the guy that I met during Mandela Oshinto Fellowship is doing impressive work in Burkina Faso, organizing an interfaith dialogue with Muslim and Christian leaders. And we have Mohammed Gulson, who is a generation change fellow. He's organizing trainings to empower Imams to improve their conflict resolution skills and to help them speak out to counter narrative of violent extremism. And people like Ahmed Haji as well and his colleague Hassan Nduga, they are doing impressive work in Uganda. And in Iraq we have someone called Hashtar who is also working with religious leaders. There are a lot of them making a lot of good works to promote a culture of peace and to religious messages. That's great. And the generation change website on usip.org. Doesn't it profile some of the fellows and some of the work they're doing? We have some, actually on the buildingpeace.org which has now been integrated. We have some peace builder profiles day in the life of a peace builder. And Hassan Nduga is one of the fellows that is highlighted for the work that he's doing in Uganda. And how can people get to that website to learn more? It is within the USIP website now. The public education page. Okay. And they have kind of, if you probably search day in the life of a peace builder, you would find it. So we have a question from Twitter from Ahmed Kanjo88. And this user asks, what percentage of youth are being engaged in efforts to stifle space for radicalization? I don't know if you have specific statistics and numbers. But I think maybe one way we can alter this question a little bit is what are some examples that you know of that fit that description of stifling space for radicalization? I actually like the way that this user put that. What are some examples that you're aware of in Rana One, we go with you about young people stifling space for radicalization? I think the good example is the work of Ahmed Haji and Hassan Nduga in Uganda. What they do is, their organization is Uganda Muslim Youth Forum. So what they do is to target Muslim youth to teach them about peace and tolerance and to engage religious leaders as part of the campaign so that they can understand like the concept of jihad that most terrorists use like most religious inspired terrorism use to young people and also to empower young people to through skills acquisition training so that they can't like believe because they don't have jobs, they have to resort to extremism. So I think there's a kind of the programs that can turn like young people away from radicalization. So I got two questions on that. When we talk about skills acquisition, aren't we falling into the same problem where you go and you get an education at a university but then there are no jobs for you to apply what you learn? Skills acquisition could fall into the same trap where okay maybe you have a university degree, there are no jobs where you can exercise that knowledge and that intellect so you get a skill but what if there are no jobs that require that skill? Are there such a limited amount of jobs that require that skill? Do you then fall into the same trap? I think what I consider like that skills acquisition is for skills that are like popular within the community. Like in our work we organize such kind of trainings. What we do we ask the participant what they want to do and most attempts they mention like soft skills like skills that they can easily acquire within three to four months. For example, barbing, carpentry, painting, photography, like skills that they want to do. We don't like ask them, we don't train them, we ask them to identify the skills. And when they identify the skills we don't like put them in class setting where we teach them like all the theories. We match them with people that have the skills and are willing to share to train them. So it's a kind of apprenticeship, they go daily and after the three month they have all the skills then we match them with organizations that are ready to support them. So there's like a pipeline right to some type of income generating work. Okay, that's great. And so we've been talking a bit about radicalization and violent extremism and this is another large question that people talk about in debate over and over again but I'd love to hear your thoughts and Melissa will start with you that there seems to be a connection or a perceived connection between religion and violent extremism. Why the connection if you feel there is one? I mean maybe the question isn't correctly phrased but I want to turn to you. There seems to be or we constantly hear about a connection between religion and violent extremism. Why is that if you believe there is one? Sure, so there are many, many drivers of violent extremism. It's not an exhaustive list. It includes reasons that we've discussed already like fitting in exclusion versus inclusion. It includes education opportunities, employment opportunities, various socioeconomic factors. Religion often gets rather violent extremism often gets couched in religious terms in parts because it can be a low hanging fruit not always but it can be. So it gets couched in religious terms from the violent extremist group or from people who are talking about and analyzing violent extremism from the outside or both? I think it can be a bit of a push. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, and so why do you think it gets couched in that? What I'm trying to get at is is there something about religious rhetoric or traditions that lend themselves to extremist behavior? Whether it be violent or non-violent but in this case we're talking about violent extremism but why is religion in recent years or decades tied to extremist behavior? We could talk for a very long time about that. But to answer briefly I would say that among other reasons it's many religious texts talk about violence and peace in different ways. So this has been ongoing. There's a famous book in religious and peace building called The Ambiguity of the Sacred. The Sacred is ambiguous. The Sacred can be violent and it can be peaceful. And so religion lends itself well to be a tool for building peace but also at the same time there are certainly anecdotes in the Bible, in the Quran, in many scriptures and in many stories and many traditions that talk about peace and conflict in different ways and can be framed in different ways as well depending on the context. Interesting. So that book is called The Ambiguity of the Sacred. Okay, check it out. Imran, you're on the front lines of this work of violent extremism in northern Nigeria where you live and work and the organization directly addressing terrorism. Obviously people familiar with Boko Haram which obviously uses a lot of religious rhetoric to justify and motivate their actions. How do you enter this question? Why this connection between religion and violent extremism? And actually do you believe that's a fair question? Like in the case of Boko Haram they have a kind of flexible marketing strategy. So when they meet different people they have different messages. So when they started they do not use that religious like imagery just as their message. They started with social problems. They cited corruption, marginalization where you can see politicians, they have everything. They have access to all the resources. Their children are studying abroad. Even before they return they have jobs ready when they come back and you have like a lot of frustration with young people. So when Muhammad Yusuf like the founder of Boko Haram started the campaign he used such issues to get attention of young people and many young people can resonate with such messages. But when they start to get people and when you explain like social problems are not just enough just to make you to start to kill people. So they have to look for alternative reasons and that is when they started to use religion. And because I said it like before Nigeria is a very religious country we believe so much a religious leaders to the extent that we respect them more than authorities or even our parents. So young people like they easily like they can easily be recruited using like religious messages and they start to cite like Jihad. They start to cite examples of al-Qaeda where they have already started something like this. So when they meet young people in villages where they are totally ignorant they don't know anything about Islam. They can start to tell them about Jihad because they don't know. So they have to use such kind of social problems to say when you're generous you can have access to employment opportunities and we can fight the politicians that deny you employment but when they go to urban areas where they see young people like they are educated they know about religion they can't they are educated they have jobs so they have to use that religious messages to tell them like even if you have employment you have to fight them to establish Islamic state. So they have that kind of flexible strategy. Interesting. So we have a question from one of our viewers. They ask how can youth engage with religious leaders or elders in productive and effective ways especially amidst extremist violence? Yeah I mean that's kind of what this whole study is kind of getting at. So I mean Aubrey do you have any ideas or thoughts on this question? Well what we found in our study is that a lot of youth are already engaging with religious leaders or are eager to engage with religious leaders on issues of peace and security or violent extremism. That a lot of times the sticking point is getting past that I want to engage and then how do we engage? And figuring out ways to build trust between the two groups. But also finding ways to prompt or encourage religious leaders to engage youth. So in many cases the youth want to engage the religious leaders but the religious leaders might not know how to bring youth into the conversation. So finding ways to kind of bridge that divide. So one thing I found interesting in the report because the study that the report talks about and just correct me if I'm wrong jump in but you know surveyed a lot of different youth leaders and religious leaders and talked about what are the ways in which they have partnered or which they engage or interact with one another and there were a lot of facilitated dialogues and conferences where they got to meet in person but one arena where these two groups were kind of struggling to connect was online. And so I wanted to hear a little bit about your thoughts about why that is and do you think that there should be more effort put into those two groups trying to engage and communicate with each other in online spaces? Melissa why don't we start with you? Sure so in various for various conferences that we've had here speaking with religious actors many of the religious actors have expressed frustration that they aren't able to access the youth because they don't have the right communication skills and so several religious leaders who are otherwise well regarded have said we would love a training on how to use Twitter, how to better access these online social networks that the youth are engaging in. So I know there are different religious institutions around the world that are trying to help to educate religious actors in that way but there's still a great need I think and it's something that comes with practice, with time, with interest and commitments in many ways. So I think that's a large part of it is that there simply aren't the skills on the side of the religious actors and at the same time there isn't another space that where they're meeting, where they're able to meet because they're communicating in different ways especially when you're looking at religious actors who are older. Now when you're looking at youth religious actors or religious youth actors they can often serve as that bridge in between the older religious leaders especially and youth who may otherwise not be getting the messages of the religious leaders. Okay, okay. Imran, you said earlier that Boko Haram has different marketing strategies. Can you tell us a little bit about what their online strategy is? Do they have a strong online presence and does it work in terms of recruiting and inspiring people to participate in what they do? Actually Boko Haram don't have like that kind of online engagement or like other terror organizations like ICs that are international. Most of the recruitment are local. They meet young people physically. They do some kind of messaging but they are not as kind of so effective that they can get attention of young people. For now Boko Haram they don't have that kind of good image that just because they engage you online or something you can easily join them. So that is where they just have to turn it physically and to some extent even fossil ultimate for now because nobody that is willing to join them so they have to go to young people first them like you must join us. So this is the kind of thing. And Arbri, some of the other generation change fellows that you've had the privilege to work with are any of them, does any of their work specifically look at online engagement around peace building efforts? Actually one of the case studies in the report is the Uganda Muslim Youth Development Forum which is based in Kampala but they work with imams across the country of Uganda and they implemented a six month training for imams on conflict management skills, peace building skills, using the toolkit for educators that USIP produced. But also so they worked on some communication skills some conflict management skills and then they took kind of a separate segment to do internet technology skills. So how do you take these lessons and transfer them to an online audience? And so they were trying to make these imams accessible to the youth but also kind of vice versa make the youth accessible to the imams. That's great. So again I wanna ask a turn to our audience if you have any questions or comments that you wanna share during this discussion you can tweet us using the hashtag youth religion peace and I'd love to bring those questions into the conversation for our guests. On the online marketing communication kind of line of conversation you mentioned ISIS and I think most people are familiar with the fact that they do have quite a robust and sophisticated and advanced online communication strategy, operation, et cetera. And one thing that I've been grappling with and thinking about over the last few years is what are they doing that we can learn from to be frank but to motivate and inspire people to peace. I don't wanna use the word extremism but to really fundamentally alter the way that they think and behave and act and what they're willing to do in the service of peace as opposed to in the service of violence and injustice and oppression. In your work in Northern Nigeria or some of the other generation change fellows or some of the religious actors that you work with is that a question that's being asked? I mean, is there something that we can learn from violent extremist groups that are effectively and successfully recruiting and motivating people online and what can we learn as peace builders from that? Yamrana? I think one of the things is how they use issues like social issues to channel their messages. For example, when they see unemployment, corruption or something, they use these messages to put them like this are the good examples. So if we are to use such messages effectively is to think of young people that are doing good things. For example, young people that started business at early age, young people that are doing peace building work, young people that excel in schools or something to inspire young people. So not just religious leaders but fellow young people you can share stories of your friends, you can share your achievements or something to inspire many young people. Whenever I travel, attend programs like this I brought a lot of young people, they send me messages on Facebook, we are so inspired by you, I want to be like you, something like this. So this is the kind of things that religious leaders can use to share stories of young people that did not just think like they're counting or something, they feel frustrated and the only way is to vent their grievances is to attack the government or something. So we just have to use these messages to cite examples that we can make a difference no matter how small we are or how difficult the situation is. And Melissa, the report mentions or talks about religious institutions addressing these social and economic development issues. What are some examples of religious institutions that are doing this? What does it look like and what does it entail? I mean, because in Rana you've been talking about this, Abra, you mentioned it as well that that is part of the issue with countries with a high youth population, also being countries that have the most violent conflicts is that lack of opportunities, lack of social and economic development and in many, in some cases, violent extremist groups are filling that void. What's the other story that we're not hearing enough about where it's religious institutions that are filling that void but through peaceful efforts and peaceful opportunities? Sure, so one example I can give is a case study that we feature in this report in Columbia, a young woman who works in her Adventist community, a minority Christian group, who she personally identifies as pacifist and she is working within her religious community and at the same time, her religious community is working with youth to create space for them to have opportunities to learn skills, to engage with each other and identify ways that they can constructively contribute to peace in their country and in their community, including through intrafaith and interfaith engagement. So in that context, it might be more ecumenical engagement. So through the church community with the blessings of the leaders in the community who are young and old, they are creating these spaces and I think that's one important way that religious communities, religious actors can be helping their communities, helping the peace building process in particular to engage youth. That's great. So we're, oh, we have a question from one of our viewers. Shelby asks, how does gender in certain religious contexts impact the recommendations for including young women in peace building? Phenomenal question. Aubrey, why don't we start with you? So we talk actually a bit about gender and engaging young women in peace building in our report and how important it is to engage young women as partners for peace, because often they don't fall into the category of women for inclusion and they don't fall into the category of youth which is often defined as young men. And so when we're engaging youth peace builders as a whole, we focus a lot of attention on engaging young women at at least an equal rate that we engage young men and have seen that their work is equally effective, that they are, even though they're often kind of sidelined, that they're still doing really critical work. And so in some contexts, how you engage young women will vary. You might engage young women separately from young men in some more conservative context. But what we've seen is that there's a lot of kind of cross-gender learning that can take place that the young men can partner with and learn from the young women who are doing peace and security work. Other thoughts wanna add to that in terms of like the gender aspect and how do you differently engage women in some of these contexts and conversations? Imrana? Like in Nigeria, in northern Nigeria where mostly are Muslims, like women cannot like go in public to preach, like to do something. So the effective way to do it is at home and their messages are so powerful at home where they can meet mother, sisters to talk to them, to talk to young people about peace or something. So I think they are so powerful to engage with directly, not just like in public, like the way we look at traditional religious leaders like which are mostly male, I think they are so powerful. Just to add to that briefly, women have a very unique role and as do men, they have different perspectives and often different insights. And so it's important to engage and listen to women, to religious women as well and to understand, to engage with religious actors with a gender lens, to appreciate the nuances and to get a more comprehensive picture of the situation on the ground to understand what works best for them. So I've got two more questions and we're coming to the end of our show and I have to bring in a question that was submitted a couple days ago from my daughter who is five years old and she dropped a very profound, serious question on me. We were at the grocery store the other day and as we've been talking, I realized that that question she asked is very relevant here. So we're going through the grocery store and she says, dad, if you learn something from like a book, can you unlearn it? And I was like, oh my goodness. I could go in so many different directions with this. And so when we're talking about religion, you all talked about the impact that religion had in your lives growing up and how that shaped your belief systems, your values, your principles and impacted the way that you act growing up. You learned that and you learned that a lot from religious texts and obviously now we've talked about violent extremist groups that try and infuse religious rhetoric and interpret their texts in order to get people to engage in violent acts. How do you respond to that question to a five-year-old or a 50-year-old when we learn something, particularly something that's so deep and sacred like religious values, but maybe all of a sudden it takes us in a direction where we're engaging in violence. Can you unlearn it and how do you unlearn it? Melissa? That's a tough question. Yes it is. And again, a lot of answers. Yeah. I would say that yes, there are ways to unlearn violence and that's a large part of what we do here at USIP. Engaging the religious sector, I think an important part about the way in which we engage the religious sector is through convening. So creating that space, that safe space that encourage is listening and storytelling and that by humanizing one another, one can have a better appreciation for different perspectives. And at that point, through that transformation, if it's unlearning violence or rehumanizing another, I think that there are ways to overcome, perhaps stereotypes or misunderstandings that were previously held. Okay, I'm gonna share that with her. Imrana, your thoughts. He has shown us you grow up like if you, you think of certain things like that you learn at LEH that are not relevant, all these situations have changed or something. So for sure you have to unlearn it because if you continue with it, you can't relate it to people well or it may even lead to conflict. And this is how actually extremism start. Like in Nigeria, when we are so divided with Muslim and Christians and you live in Muslim dominated community, you have that kind of feeling and you have a lot of extremist scholars that preach harder, they can tell you, all Muslims are going to heaven, all non-Muslims are going to hell or something. And if you grow up with that feeling, you'll be looking at all people like your only way is the best. But when you start to look at other religions, you can understand that all the religions have the same goal, they all preach the same path. It's only like we have different approaches so it can help you to tolerate others more. So you have to unlearn such kind of teachings. That's great, thank you. And Aubrey. Building on what Imrana and Melissa said, I think I would take it as you might not unlearn it but you continue to learn and question your assumptions and rethink positions that you've taken and by kind of opening your eyes to other possibilities or other perspectives, you might change your mind or change what you, your position on something. So by continuously learning, you're not necessarily unlearning but you're opening other possibilities. Right, right. Because that experience, that knowledge doesn't get erased. It's always gonna be there but yeah, how do you kind of reinterpret it? Okay, so last question and this is a question about, okay, well what now moving forward as we're learning new things about the importance of youth participating in peace processes and peace building and traditional non-tradition, religious actors participating as well and that partnership between those two groups. What are some things moving forward? And a couple of things I heard from the report and we can go down the line here. One was education and critical thinking skills. I was hoping, Aubrey, you could share a little bit about what that means when you work with folks to educate and train in critical thinking skills, what that means. Imran, I heard from you the importance of working with religious leaders to develop conflict sensitive messaging and communication so that what they're sharing or what they're communicating with doesn't actually fuel violence and so that conflict sensitive messaging and then Melissa, I'd love for you to comment on, the report talks about the important role that youth can play in helping advocate religious elders and vice versa and the role that religious elders and traditional religious leaders can play in advocating for and highlighting youth leaders and to give both sides more legitimacy in the eyes of the larger peace building process. So Melissa, why don't we start with you in terms of what does that look like youth advocating for religious leaders and religious leaders advocating for young folk? Sure, this was something that came up several times in our survey that the youth and religious actors alike responded that they are keen to be working together and partnering more in large part because they realize that they can be advocates for each other. Oftentimes both are excluded from peace negotiations from different dialogues and or there may be dialogues but they're targeted at only religious leaders or only youth but rather than keeping them siloed and keeping the identities siloed, the religious actors and the youth respectively can be advocating to bring each other to the table. So if a youth representative is invited to speak in a regional forum, that youth might acknowledge well there aren't local religious leaders here where their voices, their voices are also critical. It's important that they be represented as well and vice versa. That's great, thank you. And Rana, what about this idea of helping folks develop conflict sensitive language and messaging? This is effective like strategy to help them counter the narratives. Like instead for them just to come to say you should not join groups like Boko Haram, they are not good or something, they should also consider what messages they are sending, which kind of languages they use. For example, when religious leaders use hate speech to exclude other groups to describe other religions are bad or something, it can fail that kind of heart attack, that kind of intolerance that many young people believe growing like they're on is the best and that is how groups like Boko Haram emerge is from people that have that kind of feeling. They resent others and they believe their only thing they believe in is their own. So if they are preaching in their daily lives, like if they are preaching in mosques in churches they should consider the kind of messages they will send. They should consider about unity, about peace, about tolerance. There are many examples in Quran that teach like you don't necessarily have to convince others to join your religion. You can stay with them peacefully. So you can use such kind of Quranic verses to explain to young people that is normal for you to stay with other religions peacefully and the same with Christian religious leaders as well. They can preach others. So this is the kind of conflict sensitivity messages that we want them to consider when they are speaking to their people. That's great, thank you. And Aubrey on this idea of educating for critical thinking skills, explain that to us. So when we surveyed the youth leaders that was something that in the report we had two different surveys, one for youth leaders and one for religious leaders. And that was something that they identified as kind of a missing link or a skill that they need. And the way that I think of how the need for critical thinking or education relates to peace and conflict is that the more perspectives you're able to hear, the more ideas you're able to learn, kind of the wider vision that you can have can help to humanize people who are different, can help to help you to understand how kind of your positioned in relation to other people or organizations or belief systems. And really kind of like Imran has said, it kind of makes the space for there to be an alternative that isn't wrong. It's just different. I like that, I like that. Well, thanks to the three of you again for not only the report, which is phenomenal and everyone should go on to usip.org and read the full report yourself. Also thank you for just spending the time here today. And then just for the peace building work that you do. I mean, all of you really are on the front lines all over the world doing important work. I think it's just essential that your stories, your work also get elevated and highlighted to counter the sense that there's just a lot of violence going on out there. And there certainly is and that's what we're working to address, but there's also a lot of amazing work that you all are doing. So I just want to thank you all for that. And I want to thank all of our audience members online who tuned in today. Our guests on today's show have been Aubrey Cox. She's a senior program specialist here at USIP and she manages the Generation Change Fellows Program. Also Melissa Nozel who is also a senior program specialist here at USIP focusing on religion and inclusive societies. And then we've also been joined by Imrana Alhaji Bubba who's the founder of the Youth Coalition Against Terrorism and is also a Generation Change Fellow. So again, thanks. The Peace Frequency is produced by the Global Campus which is USIP's online learning platform which is designed to teach and learn critical peace building skills through distance learning, a growing multimedia library of peace building resources and virtual live events just like this one. So you can learn more about the Global Campus at usipglobalcampus.org. And I've been your host, Darren Cambridge. Thanks to our listeners and our viewers for your questions and comments. Be sure to check the Peace Frequency website to access a recording of this show and other archived episodes of the podcast. The URL is usipglobalcampus.org slash peace dash frequency. And you can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. So until next time, keep learning, supporting and building peace.