 Welcome to our U.S. Institute of Peace conversation on supporting youth who build peace. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace and we are coming to you live from Dharamsala, India. We have just concluded an extraordinarily and deeply inspiring two-day dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and 28 remarkable young women and men from 13 countries that are affected by conflict, by violent extremism, and by war. And each of them is doing courageous, amazing work to build peace in their own communities. USIP was founded 30 years ago dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, peace is practical, and peace is essential for our global security. And so we do this by working around the world with individuals, communities, and countries, governments, equipping them with the knowledge, the skills, and the training to build peace. And we heard today from His Holiness the Dalai Lama that most important right now in a world with so much violent conflict is that we focus on a practical peace, a realistic peace. And at USIP we believe that one of the most effective and practical actions that we can take is to support youth as they build a community of global peace builders. And as those youth take actions to build peace around the world. So it's our great pleasure to host this dialogue as a continuation of our two days here. And I'm very pleased now to introduce our moderator for this conversation, Michael Gerson, who is a columnist at the Washington Post and a fellow at the One Campaign. Many thanks for joining us, Michael. Nancy, thank you so much. I'm really honored to be here. This looks like a pretty boring think tank stage, but right outside of this window is the foothills of the Himalayas. It's an extraordinary setting for this meeting. And we're in the middle of a thunderstorm, which could take out the light, so you might watch for that. This is an extraordinary meeting, unlike anything I've ever been involved in. Over the last two days, the Dalai Lama has given nine hours at this time to mentor this extraordinary group of people. And people who are facing some of the most difficult problems in our world, and for whom I have great respect. And really, that is the reason we're here. Most of all, this is an extraordinary group of young leaders who led our rich conversations with one another, and who have eaten with them and talked with them. And I'm in awe of their conscience and character and what they've already been able to accomplish. And so I honestly think, after two days with them, that they can change the world. This conversation is a global conversation. We're taking questions from Twitter at USIP. Very simple, at USIP. And the hashtag is, hashtag USIP Youth Exchange. And I want to ask our audience here to turn off their phones, or to silence and make sure so we don't have any, we're in kind of tight quarters, so we don't have any disruption. Let me briefly introduce our participants, some from among the young leaders here, and some are delegates that have been here to watch, like me, and to learn. It's my honor to introduce Victoria Iboye. I'm sorry she was instructing me on this, but I messed it up. She's an educator from Nigeria that is really passionate about children. She founded an extraordinary organization called One African Child Foundation to educate children in global citizenship, so they can become responsible citizens and agents of change in their communities. She's also a UNESCO representative, a youth advocate for UNESCO. So we're glad to have Victoria. We're also honored to have Sukina Humya. She's the founder of an NGO that protects children and vulnerable youth in Morocco. I'm not, I'm not the founder, I'm a founding member. Founding member of an NGO that helps outreach to youth in Morocco, deputy director of a cultural center that fights delinquency and drug addiction, and extremism through tutoring and language courses and sports and music and theater and art and computer classes and it sounds like an extraordinary program. I'm happy to have Saaji Trevus who is a really one of the world leaders when it comes to youth leadership. We're really honored to have him as the director of children and youth programs at the Search for Common Ground. I mean he's founding co-chair of the UN Interagency Working Group on Youth and Peace Building. And we're happy to have Emil Bruno, Dr. Emil Bruno who is a social and cognitive scientist at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the world's leading experts on how the structures of the brain relates to conflict issues. So I thank you all for being here. As I said one of the great pleasures of the last few days has been meeting these exceptionally young leaders and we've got two of them. Victoria I just want to start by asking you what it was, what experience or belief that caused you to get involved in education and child development. What drives you? What motivates you? My journey started many years back coming from a highly populated part of Lagos and living in a society that dictated to me what to become and exactly how I must act. It was like I had no voice of my own in my society. It was like I lived in a society but actually do not exist in the society. I suffered through so many emotional crises as a child. I had so many conflicts from within. I suffered through so many hearts, so many disappointments. I was hopeless about life. I was not optimistic about what the future held for me. There were sometimes that thoughts of suicide crossed my heart but even my parents did not know about this. It was like a war from within me. So growing up I began to learn so many things and the quality education influenced who I have become today and also my faith as a Christian has also influenced my journey in peace building. I realized myself identity as a woman. I realized myself identity as an individual and I noticed in my society that a lot of children are also going through this circle that have gone through as a young girl. A lot of them do not know who they are. They do not know about their self identity. So I was so passionate about starting out education, quality education to teach children from my community. Most of whom are from vulnerable backgrounds about self-awareness to help them know who they are and to help them know the potential that they carry from within as individuals. I also believe that peace in the world begins with peace with oneself. A lot of the global conflicts that we have today can be avoided if some of the perpetrators know about who they are. If they can choose great values, if they can be proactive about life, if they can choose to follow the path of the good path and not to do things that will authorize people, if they can choose to live in the spirit of love and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness. So the work that we do with One African Child is to teach children between the ages of 5 to 15 about global citizenship education and peace building. What we are doing at One African Child is quite different because what we teach children goes beyond learning, teaching them to learn to read and write. It goes beyond incorporating in them values that they are global citizens issue, that they are global citizens, that we live in a world that is shared, that our actions and inactions affect the world that we live in. So they must choose to be good, they must choose to think about the future for not only themselves but for other people. And also we teach children about skills in critical thinking and problem solving because there are so many issues at the global level but a way to resolve them is to start locally. So by involving in them skills in critical thinking and problem solving, they are able to think about local issues and how they can be solution providers. What we are doing is to build the regeneration of creators, innovators, social entrepreneurs who are not only passionate about the world but who are taking active steps to change the situation of things around them. I know that Morocco has its own unique set of challenges and I'm curious about how you got involved in outreach to at risk youth. Well it all began when I was in high school, when I was 15. I was with my friends and I heard that there is something going on, conference or meeting in my high school and then they were serving cookies and drinks for free. So I went with my friends to this meeting and that was like a turning point in my life. It was the day I met Mr. Bucher Mazos who is the founder of our association and the culture center who I consider my mentor, my source of inspiration and my best friend. When I met him it was the first time in my life that I heard the word leadership, citizenship, civic engagement given back to the community. So before this I mean I always I used to ask myself these questions. Why would they help someone I don't know? Why would they help someone who had never helped me? What do you mean by giving back to the community? What the community gave me? So I was asking myself these questions and thanks to this man I discovered the magic in the world of civic engagement. So in 2006 it's Mej neighborhood association was created. It's Mej in Arabic means integration and one year later our culture center was created by Mr. Bucher Mazos and it's a community center. When we first started it was the culture center but now 10 years after the creation of the center I can say that we go beyond the cultural. The center tries to protect actress kids by providing them with a safe environment where they can express themselves, express their talents and where we can protect them from delinquency or school dropouts and extremism. What's unique about our experience is that our culture center is the first culture center that was created in Morocco by an NGO because in general culture centers are created by the government so it's a 100% personal initiative run by youth and it's in a neighborhood called City Moment and City Moment is one of the poorest and largest shanty town in Morocco where all the terrorist suicide bombers were involved in the suicide attacks that shook Morocco twice came from. So and before we created the center they didn't have a place where they can go. No cultural centers, no social centers, nothing. So we are proud to be the first culture center to open stores for this population and for this community. What we present is a completely different vision from what is familiar to the youth in Morocco. So we provide them with examples and models that exemplify a meaningful way of life. So we care for them and we share and we show this care by action, not words. These people have been used and abused so they're fed up of like hearing words and speeches they need action. We try to protect them by offering different activities, cultural activities, artistic activities, trainings and workshops and what is interesting in this experience is that youth are serving youth. So the difference, the age difference is not big so the message and our mission is more credible because we don't only speak the same language but we speak the same mentality. We come from the same neighborhood. We are all from the same neighborhood. That's why the name of our NGO is Idmash Neighborhood Association. We understand each other. We went to the same school so we understand their needs and we give them an opportunity to shine. And as I was fortunate enough to have someone who believed in me even when I was unable to believe in myself, I feel that it's my duty to help them shine and help them see how beautiful, talented and smart they are. Victoria, we have you and the others had a really unique opportunity to see the Dalai Lama close up like a few feet away for a long time. I'm wondering what you learned from him or what you admired coming out of this, what you saw in him. Thank you. One thing that keeps coming to me was he mentioning about love and compassion, forgiveness and tolerance and that is what we need in the world we live in today. Love is a universal language, putting our religions, our different ethnic group aside. We all speak the same language when it comes to love, when it comes to compassion. And I feel like if we all can live in the spirit of love and compassion every day, we will not only have a happy world, but we will be very, very happy as individuals. It also touched on the power of building a strong community. It really challenged me as a youth by saying that we are our own masters. Sometimes we are expecting the solution to come from elsewhere, to come from the government, to come from our leaders, to come from the sky, but we have to be able to provide solutions to some of the challenges that we are faced with today. And it also connected that we can do this as young peace builders by talking, emphasizing the role of education, by educating those who are around us on peace building, on how to build resilience, on how to forgive, and especially on how to love other people. It was such a fantastic exchange that we had with the Dalai Lama. So can I know anything that surprised you, inspired you? Well, I don't even know where to begin. So I love how His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave us time and space to reflect and see clear what I want to be and what I want to do, and how to get back to my true self, or at least a closer version of my true self. This clarity is making me so hopeful, and I'm looking forward to experience life with this fresh perspective. The meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama helped me and learned so many fake truths and self-enforcing beliefs, I would say. I feel like I made deep connections. I got to understand more about conflicts, about love, forgiveness, compassion. I get to understand more that conflict can be an opportunity to grow, to be a better person for me and for others. And that's it. That's wonderful. Was it a consistent theme that transformation begins within and we have to be transformed ourselves in order to transform the world? That's right. So, Emil, I wanted to ask, what motivated you to get into the issue of studying the way the brain relates to conflict? And, you know, we've talked a little bit, and the goal here is how to turn vague commitments to peace into actual outcomes. And so, how did you get into that study? Well, I actually got into science through peace building. I was a high school teacher and I would travel during the summers, and one summer I volunteered at a conflict resolution camp in Ireland. This was during the Troubles, and this is one of those camps that brings kids together for kind of an intensive three-week-long experience. And at the end of the camp, a fight broke out between two of the boys, and it precipitated a full-scale 150-child brawl. So, my experience was trying to figure out what I had just done, what I had been a part of. So, it was the failed intervention that motivated me to try to understand more about what types of things we do work, what types of things don't work, what are the best practices in conflict resolution. And so, as a scientist, I went into this analytically, and I found that social science shows us that it isn't completely rare that our best efforts, that our intuitive interventions fail. In fact, of the 11 really well-documented interventions that have been done on anti-rape campaigns on college campuses in the U.S., three of them have had a positive impact, five had no impact, and three had a negative impact. So, this seems to be somewhat commonplace. And I think cognitive neuroscience gives us a hint that it's not ill-will or it's not ignorance that's making these things fail. It might just be how our brains work. And that my favorite analogy of a brain is actually taken from Buddhism, that is, that the human brain is designed like a rider sitting on top of an elephant, and the rider represents the part of your brain that you're consciously aware of, that analytical part of your brain, whereas the elephant represents the vast majority of your brain that you don't have access to, so the parts of your brain that control your body temperature and your hormone regulation, but they control a lot of processes as well. So, there's some very specific examples we have now of the types of messages that appeal to the elephant that we might be unconsciously driving people in the wrong direction. So, for example, a campaign against littering might appeal to the elephant or to the rider on people by saying cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item and show just the ground littered with cigarette butts. And this is an actual advertising campaign in California. So, that's appealing to someone's, to the analytical part of their brain. Of course, this is shocking. We shouldn't do this. But in showing that everybody's doing it, you're giving them a norm. And we know that the elephant, the unconscious part of the brain, is really strongly influenced by what other people are doing. And this might be completely unconscious, but if you think everybody else is doing it, you might unconsciously follow that behavior. And when they've actually analyzed the data for these types of campaigns, they find that when a campaign includes a norm, it actually dramatically increases the behavior you're trying to decrease. So, we make these interventions with our best intuition. And we're making them for the analytical parts of people to appeal to the rider on the elephant, which is great. But we just have to make sure that we're not also including in there accidentally pieces of the intervention that actually appeal to the elephant and they're driving people in the opposite direction. So, I feel like cognitive science has a role to play here in giving us some insight into what effect their interventions are having. So, my ultimate goal is to do research that's relevant to these incredible peace builders. I want to put science to work for peace, to give them information that can help them on understanding what are the best practices, what are the best approaches to conflict resolution. This is just a reminder for the viewers that we are going to take questions at the end. And it's, you can do it on Twitter at USIP. So, we'd love to see some of those questions. So, can you give us a global overview on the challenges of youth and maybe emphasize some of the roles that youth can play in conflict? Sure. Well, thank you again. This is a wonderful conversation. It's inspiring sitting next to two brilliant young women because I can, I'm motivated but also build on Emil's comments as well. You know, just put it into context. We are living in a world where young people constitute the vast majority of the populations in the countries we work in. And in that context, for the majority of time we've looked at it as a youth bulge. The countries with large youth populations constitute a youth bulge and we misunderstood what that means. We thought of it as this youth bulge means this large youth populations are a threat. And because of that, we've looked at them as either the troublemakers in conflict or as victims of conflict, these young people. And that has actually pervaded our system of engaging young people for many years. That's one challenge of seeing young people as troublemakers and as victims only when they are much more complex. Second, I think, is the lack of trust in people have about young people and what their capacities are. And third, I would say, is the lack of resources that they are getting to be able to be. You have two amazing young people, peace builders, who are struggling sometimes to have their voices served. So when you think, put that into context. If you look at it, 1.8 billion people live in this world today. Out of that, over 600 million young people are affected by violent conflict. It's 1.8. So if we always are seeing young people as troublemakers and perpetrators of violence, eventually these 1.8 billion might actually be troublemakers. Similarly, if there's 1.8 billion people are not given adequate access to the public discourse, opportunities for public discourse, because they seem like they're a liability, then they become a liability. So these are some of the big challenges, I think. What I want to leave though is that, but that narrative is changing dramatically. And I'd love to talk more about medicine. I suspect that this kind of activism can feel lonely. It can have a toll on your soul. As you do this, can you give us an idea of the inner struggles and pressures of someone involved in this kind of work and how you deal with it? You know, it's a tough question. But it's something I experienced myself, is sometimes when you feel that you are helpless and hopeless, these kids were working with they see us as their mentors, their models to follow, their examples. And sometimes when we ourselves fail to be our own model, it becomes really hard to promote what we are trying to promote. Sometimes I keep asking myself, why am I doing this? Am I doing this because this is what I want to do? Am I doing this because it gives meaning to my life? Am I trying or am I being selfish and trying to use their misery and pain? Because they make me feel better about myself. They make me feel that I achieved something. So all these things represent an internal conflict that we always forget about, an internal war that we don't see. And this is what made me decide a few years ago to stop all what I was doing with the kids at the community center and start looking for myself and start looking for these answers and start seeing myself from a different perspective. And the conclusion was that when you travel and you are not in your comfort zone anymore. Because you traveled the world, right? Yeah, so it was a journey, I would say a spiritual journey that took me from Turkey to Thailand to India to Pakistan. And they realized at that time that you can run away from your religion, you can run away from God, you can run away from the social constructions, the political constructions, but you can never run away from yourself. And that inner peace is as important as peace in the world. That if you are not able to be in peace with yourself, how can you promote these values? So that's an amazing reflection to be that self-conscious at your age. I wanted to ask Victoria because we've had a similar conversation about inner peace and where that comes from. I'm curious, your views on this problem? Yes, inner peace comes from within. It is very, very important to know who we are, our self-identity before we can learn how to regulate ourselves. Because self-regulation is also very, very important. Self-regulation helps to direct, it makes us resilient in the face of adversity. And that is really, really important. For me, I have been able to build inner peace through my faith. I have found a source of inspiration through my personal relationship with God, and that is pretty much personal. Also, through the work that I do, I find motivation in our success stories. And that has really, really inspired a lot of what I do. So I would say that inner peace, it is very, very important for us to be able to find inner peace from within. That can direct a lot of things that we do, and that can keep us going, even in the face of difficult times. It really was one of the themes that might not be at other conferences when you have the Dalai Lama involved, this emphasis mastering ourselves before we attempt to change the world. So I think that was a great lesson for all of us. I want to ask, Victoria, maybe just to follow on a bit, do you find encouragement in being with this group? Because I assume it can feel isolated when you're doing this work in a community. But you've been with people that are doing extraordinary work. I'm wondering how that affected you or encouraged you? Yes, very much. I've found a lot of encouragement with the kind of people that we work with. And also, there have been times when it felt so lonely. And there have been times when it felt like the more you are trying to solve the problem, more problems keep arising. But I've been able to find joy and peace of mind in trying to go back to what I started, what we do with One African Child. So at One African Child, we have a human-centered approach to our work. Our project is called the Build Model. And Build stands for believe, understand, invent, listen, and deliver. So we have to believe in ourselves as individuals. We have to believe in the potential that lies within. And understand is trying to get the motive behind what we do. What really drives us? What need are we trying to address in our society? Our contribution doesn't really make a difference. So whenever I'm finding difficulties with delivery, I go back to the first stage, which is believe. I try to go back and re-energize myself to believe that, yes, I can do this. Yes, it is very, very possible. Although it may seem very difficult because there are so many challenges, it is really, really tough when you are just one person trying to make a, trying to do good in the midst of millions and a lot of bad people in the society. So I found great motivation in believing that this is very possible and that even as one person, our contribution can make a lot of difference in the world. Kind of similarly, I know that this kind of work can seem lonely. What did you discover with the other youth leaders here in these last few days? What did you find? I found that we are all different. We are all dealing with different issues and conflicts, but at the same time, we are the same. And just seeing all these success stories make you feel so optimistic about the future of the world, how they are dedicated, they believe in their dreams. And it's not only words, it's action. So people are working on the field to make a change in this world. They don't wait for this change to happen. They don't keep, they don't keep blaming the others for their own misery and, and, and, and pain, but they are working for it because we have, I mean, as humans, we have tendency to, to blame political parties, to blame our parents, to blame the society, but we always forget, forget that we are the society. So if we don't work all together to, to, to change the world, and it doesn't matter how small or big your actions are, who would? I actually love to hear your reactions, both of you, to Saad's work about the way that adults view your work. Are they patronizing? Are they helpful? Are they, how does the adult world react to youth work related to conflict? What do you think? Okay. So as I said, I was so fortunate to, to, to have a mentor in my life who believes in, in, in, in me and always gives me opportunities to shine and discover my own capacity. But I will tell you the story is that a few years ago, Mr. Mazos, because he always wants us to be in the, in the, in the, in the front. So he sent me to, to the commune, to meet the president, to present the work of our NGO and the center and the activities we are doing and how we are different from schools because we are not teachers. We don't, we don't create students, but we create citizens. So once I entered to his office, he went out and he called Mr. Mazos and he told him that it is very insulting and disrespectful for him to send a kid for this important meeting to discuss something like conflict resolution and peace building. He left the office and I didn't have the chance to talk to him because I was told on the phone that it would be better to leave the office. So this is one of the, of the stories and, and, and, and memories that, that I will always remember, but at the same time, I mean, this is one example of many, there are many other people who are believing us, encouraging us. We have people who who didn't believe in us when, but when they started seeing the success and the things we do, they started believing in us. So, exactly. And, and one of the, one of, one of the, the things is that we have in Morocco an initiative called the National Initiative for Human Development. And usually it's a long process and you have to apply and, and, and wait, and wait for months sometimes. And six years after the creation of the center, it was the opposite that happened. It was the government who came to us and asked us to apply for grant. So this is where, exactly a sign of, of, of trust. Do you have any thoughts on that and the reactions of the adult world to your initiative? Yes. I remember when I first started our initiative on African child, I was just 19 and in my second year at college. Also it was like a specific year in my life where I just crossed from studying economics to studying law. And my father wanted me to be a lawyer and the way that he saw the law profession, he expects me to be a lawyer and to be transformed into a successful lawyer overnight. So it was like really, really tough for me to follow up with what I was doing, saying that I did not receive so many support from a lot of adult from my community. It was discouraging, but at the same time I was also convinced that if they can see the output of what we are doing, if they can see the difference that we are making in the lives of the children and youth that we work with, maybe the perception, maybe the way they view things will change. And working starting out, I felt a bit lonely, but over the years we have received so many supports and we have been able to gain more trust. I've been able to build more trust from my, from my parents. And also I feel like we have to be able to show adults that we are competent, that we are competent as young people. They may be interested to collaborate with us, but again maybe they are worried about are they going to be able to deliver? If we bring you to such a high level event, will you have something to say? Do you have something to share? So I believe that competence also comes with consistency with the kind of work that we do. If we continue with the work that we do, if we don't give up, and that is again the more reason why we need to be resilient. So I believe that we will be able to gain more support from adults if we continue with our work. Simon, related to this issue, I know you've been heavily involved in the United Nations Security Council in 2000, 250. Can you explain what that is, what the effort represents, how that's moving forward? Sure, it's a nice tie-in because what I'm hearing also is you can have trust, but it takes a long time to gain that trust to see adults and policymakers as young people as part of the solution, as investors in solution. So like I said in my earlier remark, there's a shift happening. The international community has been recognizing that we cannot just see young people as troublemakers, victims or perpetrators of violence only. To address the complexity of the issues the world is facing now, we have to see this 1.8 billion young people as an asset and as part of the solution, as the engine drivers who are driving this chain. And because of that, over a four-year process, a group of people came together, thinking of their part of something much bigger, what they're trying to do is address something more complex. So bringing agencies together, U.N. agencies, civil society organizations, Utah organizations to come together to actually create an enabling environment to see a policy framework that actually articulates that young people can no longer be seen as victims or perpetrators. They have to be seen as partners. And thanks to the Kingdom of Jordan and the United Nations, the member security council members unanimously on December 9th approved the Security Council Resolution 2250. It's a huge historic victory for young people to be seen for the first time in years. It gave them a voice. When you hear that they haven't been having a voice, now there's a global voice articulated. It was inspired by the Women's Peace and Security 1325 framework. In 2016 years ago, a LAMA resolution was passed to the Security Council, recognizing the role women play in peace and security efforts. No longer can men only be dictating peace or managing security. Women play an important role in this process. Sixteen years later, now we are recognizing young women and young men also play an equally important role. And the world community has recognized these women struggle. And you know what, I just want to make this point. Victorians of China are not unique. I'm not trying to downplay you, but you're not unique. There's millions of young people just like them who are not only struggling, but really advocating on peace issues. So we shouldn't look at them as a unique special case because they're elites or they're special. They're not unique. There are millions of young people like this. So the Security Council resolution 2250 is also the first time a Security Council resolution combines the human rights framework, combines a post-conflict mediation process, combines contrary violent extremism, combines peace building and the role youth play within that complex environment. So it's a pretty amazing significant resolution that the most powerful body in the world has recognized now. That's pretty amazing. There are quickly five key pieces in this resolution. One is talking about participation, the role young people play in decision-making process. It encourages member states to recognize their youthful populations as partners and as being involved in mediation efforts. Second is the protection. You see around the world young people are caught up as victims in conflict and the recognition that they need to be protected from harm. Young women are huge victims of this around sexual violence in conflict areas and the member states have recognized we need to do extraordinary steps to protect young people from sexual violence in conflict areas. Third is around participation. I'm actually the three here for prevention. Prevention is about creating an enabling environment around socio-economic, cultural education opportunities to make sure that young people are given opportunities to be part of that economic development process. Fourth is around partnerships. UN resolution recognizes that UN agencies who are working in many of these countries have to also can see young people as part of the solution and to be partnering with young people. Youth-led organizations to invest in them as partners also. And the last piece is around demobilization and you know BDRR processes where young people are actually part of building peace, engage young people as partners in the demobilization, green integration processes as partners. When we look at this, there's one thing that I think is important to put into perspective. Now we have an opportunity to show progress. So the Security Council requires the Secretary General to actually report to the Security Council around the progress member states are making and investing and supporting young people as partners. So here's an opportunity for these young youth organizations to join this movement to actually amplify the good work you're doing, to amplify the results you're having at a community level, to really showcase that young people are actually part of the solution. You are doing things constructively and you're building trust with state and adult partners to actually see them as an investment. So this is the tremendous opportunity, historic opportunity for this. Well then they have a good advocate in you obviously. That's wonderful. A reminder, we are taking Twitter questions at USIP and a reminder to our audience also to be thinking about questions because we want to go to you next here. Emil, one of the most interesting aspects of your work is how brain imaging might guide us in finding answers to conflict. I find that fascinating. Talk about using science in the cause of peacemaking. What does that mean? Explain that a little bit. Well I think it can mean a number of things. So one, it's discouraging to learn that you have these unconscious biases that might be interfering with your best efforts to resolve conflict and might be driving individuals into conflict. It biases how you see the world. You might seek out information that already confirms your side's view and you might unconsciously scrutinize or ignore information that runs counter to what you already believe. And this can lead people to kind of stay ideologically committed to their side and kind of lead to conflict. But also there's a huge amount of hope that's also kind of built into the human brain which is the human brain, one of the guiding principles of it is that it's based on flexibility that you can gain conscious control over these unconscious processes that nothing is set in stone, nothing is hardwired that you can do this, that it's very empowering. And so I think one message and one of the reasons I'm really excited to be here is that I feel like Tibetan monks are kind of the first applied neuroscientists and they've showed us what's possible and they have a process by which we can gain this conscious control over unconscious processes. And sometimes we found in research that it's actually not that hard for some of these biases, sometimes just being aware of it inoculates you against experiencing it and that's incredibly hopeful. And so there are a number of other things that neuroimaging can potentially lend. One is if you're trying to measure the effectiveness of your program at changing some of these unconscious biases, it might be really hard to measure by asking people. So if you ask someone how open-minded they are, they might not know how to answer that question. They might be motivated to say, yes, I'm totally open-minded and they might not even know how open-minded they are. But with neuroimaging, we might be able to get access to look directly under the hood at what's going on, to see what effect the program is having actually on someone's open-mindedness. So I think that that's just a really exciting prospect. It is. But let me follow up just one question because you're doing a lot of work in dehumanization, the process by which we dehumanize other people. Can you explain that just a little bit about what you're learning there? Yeah, so dehumanization is is denying that another group is fully evolved and civilized. That your group is more evolved and civilized than them. And I've been examining this across the world and seeing, first of all, is this true? Is this prevalent across societies? And if it is, does the amount that someone dehumanized another group predict their behaviors towards that group? So I've been focused on looking at dehumanization, for example, of Muslim refugees in Europe, all across Europe, and found that yes, indeed, it's quite prevalent. And yes, indeed, it predicts really important behaviors in the people. For example, how many refugees that think should be allowed into their country is strongly predicted by how much they dehumanize the refugees. And one thing that I think is really interesting is with neuroimaging, I've been able to show that dehumanization is not just a way to express your extreme dislike, that these are separate processes. You can like a group and dehumanize them. And that's still problematic. And I think this is, we can see kind of examples of this in colonial past, that some of the colonial policies, like removing children from their homes to educate them in Western boarding schools, that might have been driven by a sincere liking for the children, but a deep dehumanization of them. And so this seems to be a really important process that's driving a lot of conflict. And I think it's a really important one for us to challenge now. And we're looking at that. Well, we can actually have a lot of Twitter questions. I'm going to begin with one, and then we're going to take three questions from the audience right afterwards. And maybe we can deal with them, you know, as people are interested. But I have a mom from New Delhi. And it's a great question. Interfaith coalitions are often important for resolving conflicts, especially in Asia. What role can youth play in interfaith efforts? Was it interesting that? Can I? Okay. So I would say that youth must find the existing resilience effort available from their community and work towards making attempt to use those efforts to resolve the problems. For example, in India is highly diverse in interfaith. So they can organize platforms, dialogues or meetings to bring together interfaith leaders, imams and pastors to discuss about how they can come together to build peace, to build peace in India. So I would say that we must not just sit back and wait for the solution to come from wherever, but we must take active steps. So one of the things they can do is to bring interfaith leaders together and see how we can be engaged in a dialogue. For the past two days, that is what we have been engaged in here in India. And it has been able to produce a lot of health goods. I think the same thing can also be done here in India. I thought it was meaningful that it is holiness brought in a Muslim cleric in foreign meetings in order to encourage exactly what you're talking about. To try to view these things from multi-faith angles and find unifying causes. So we were practicing that, I think. Oman is a great youth leader here who is associated with the commonwealth as well and is a huge champion on these causes. One thing though I noticed though is there's a language difference that faith leaders, adult faith leaders use that are sometimes disconnected from the language and the mission and the heart that young people have. So it's about for before bringing religious leaders together. I think it's important for religious leaders and young people, but in the same way, to really understand each other and build that trust before they actually work across religious lines as well. I think that's really important because then the message is also clear. So I think that the language and understanding has to be equal. I know you wanted to add. Yeah, I would like to say that interfaith dialogue and dialogues is not something alien. It's not a phenomenon or a miracle. It's the essence of humanity and we need to work more on this. Second, in his question he talked about the role of youth and if we see that all this hate, anger in the world is due to the absence of interfaith dialogue and when we see the extremist groups, they are recruiting young people. So they're not recruiting adults. They're recruiting teenagers and youth in their early 20s. So we need youth to play this role instead of the adults. Why? Because first, they understand each other. They know their needs and they speak the same language. Right. It's interesting. There are competitors to your work that want to radicalize youth and use them in conflict and I think that your point about youth meeting that need is really quite important. I think actually that youth have a lot of power too. My intuition is that if you brought faith leaders into a group and they were talking to youth, that they would be on their best behavior, that they might see that some of the petty differences they have when they're standing in front of youth, they would realize how petty those are. Let me take three questions here. Please. Yes, and let's make them questions. Thank you very much. My name is Ahmed Hadji. I am from Uganda. I'm part of the Generation Change Program which is a community of practice of peace builders that is inspired by USIP across the globe and I'm very happy to be here. My question goes to Saaji and I want to really begin with one of the courts, one of the so many coaches under the Generation Change Program and her name is called Manal. Immediately after we realize that we got this news that we have a new framework that will inspire many individual but also collective by peace builders like I am to do our work when we are just seen as contributors not as spoilers like you said. Manal did post this comment. She said that the 20 to 50 framework is a huge historical opportunity because it gives the young people the voice of not only defining their space and content but also importantly shaping the process. Now the question is it talks about partnerships but what happens in a scenario where this particular framework is not holding governments to account especially reporting frameworks on how they are demonstrating that they are leading with young people in this incredible opportunity and I think it's very important. Thank you. My name is Didas Mzirai and I'm from Kenya and first I want to thank Mr. Prelis for your contribution in the formulation of the UN Resolution 2250 as co-chair of the UN Interagency Working Group on Youth and Peace Building. Thank you very much. We really appreciate. My question is now that we have the resolution how do we get young people to participate in the implementation process because I think it is important that we get young people in the driver's seat. Thank you. I guess young people are really hearing right now. We have a third question. My name is Silvio William and I come from South Sudan. I have one question to Saaji. My country has been going through a civil war and the majority of people who are fighting in this war are youth. My government has tried different methods in demobilization and reintegration but all these efforts had failed. So what would be your advice? What is the best method of demobilization and reintegration of youth into the society? Thank you. Okay, well we have three questions for you. I think we can add to this discussion. So maybe you can kick off but what happens when governments don't cooperate here? How does this implement? Thank you for the questions. They're really important questions. You know the Security Council resolution just to be clear is something that UN Security Council member states created but it's not technically even though they created it it's owned by people. It's owned by the 1.8 billion young people because it was inspired by over 11,000 young people who actually advocated for it as well and actually convinced the members of the Security Council that opportunity and time now is to take a stand on behalf of young people itself. So there is a recognition by the most powerful nations itself. So the challenge is that some governments don't always see young people, see young people sometimes as a threat. But to actually engage the important piece though is young youth groups have to see not as a quick fix solution. This is a long journey. The resolution took four and a half years to materialize because we were building the confidence of people who actually see it. This is an important thing. Similarly, engaging governments is a long-term process. Engaging youth groups to come to an understanding of what is important for them in nation building, whether it's in Uganda, in Sudan, South Sudan is a long process. So build the trust with governments, let them see you as partners in the process. And I can go into details but I think we need to talk more bilaterally about those things. Around demobilization specifically, the UN actually supports demobilization processes. Now they have mandated, UN agencies are mandated because of this resolution to actually partner with youth-led organizations in this. So it's an opportunity now for youth organizations to say wait, what we know is not working. Here's an opportunity to intervene and actually shape the discourse differently. The DDR process for many years has worked to a great extent but massively also failed because young people have not really been part of the process of designing it. So here you can actually change the discourse. Again, the opportunity here is to see you as partners because you own this process, young people own this and don't be afraid now in non-adversarial way to see governments, as stakeholders and partners in this process. I'd like to ask our youth leaders, what is your reaction to that high-level attention at the UN? What does that do for your work? What does that do for how you approach things in the future? Any thoughts? Or just even whether it's encouraging to you when you see that high-level attention? Well for me that's encouraging but I'm always concerned about going beyond paper policies to getting the job done because I feel like after the conference not much is really really done at the local level. So I really do hope that we can have like an evaluation process to really measure progress and also to keep updating stakeholders, the youth, the UN on the changes that have been done. So that would really really be great not only making sure that youths are fully engaged at the UN level and that those that are engaged are merited people, those who are competent, those who can represent the voices of thousands of other youth at the local level. This is very very much important and as my colleague Dida said implementation is key because after all of this paperwork, if nothing is done then the whole work for over four years in preparing for this resolution is a waste. So we really need to also consult the youth on how can we come together as collaborators to implement some of these policies and ideas that we have come up with. I didn't answer Dida's question around the implementation. I think right now as a community, we have the largest community of practice around youth peace and security, bringing UN agencies, civil society organizations, youth organizations together. And my my plea is to actually join this so we actually can collaborate more not to avoid replication but better coordinate on this. What we are looking at is the rollout process of the 2020 has to be owned locally by young people, youth led organizations. And that ownership is around how do you shape public policies locally? Peace is ultimately local, looks like we said individual, right? Conflict is also very much local. So that means what can local at the local level, what are the public policies that can better shape an inclusive security process? What are the better public policies that can better shape a sustainable peace process? From the education to infrastructure, all these policies are there. That's where the budget lines are too. So it's an opportunity to say how do we shape it and here's where the rollout can happen. But there's a lot of tools that are already online, youthforpeace.info is a website where there's a lot of tools that are being developed that young youth organizations can use. But then also opportunity to collaborate so we actually know what is happening so we can measure it. And one last thing is the report, the Secretary General's report on progress, the progress study, is an opportunity to actually showcase the results also. So join the conversation and actually help shape what that rollout can be. Because we don't have the answers. We want you to help do it because we don't know what Uganda versus South Sudan. We need you guys to help in that. Emil, can I just broaden that just a little bit to talk about outcomes in general? How do you build feedback into programs themselves? How do you make that virtuous cycle take place where you're learning from what you're doing? I'm just interested what you've seen that works in that way. Well first, I think everybody recognized kind of how it can work personally. The Dalai Lama talked a lot about his analytical approach and his constant introspection. And I think that we all can benefit from that personally, but I think programs can benefit from it too. And I think just like at the personal level, you have to just make it a habit. And there are some programs that I think the programs that are starting now try to build evaluation into their business model of their program. And I think that's kind of what it takes, the constant evaluation, so it's not seen as a threat to an existing program. You don't want to impose it 10 years after the program is already established and then it's a real pain to start the evaluation. But if you build it in to kind of the bones of the program, then I think programs start to see that it can help guide the program because you get constant feedback and it's habitual. Let me do a Twitter question from PWB from Spain. With the youth bulge across the Middle East in particular, can the panel offer ideas of how to reach people under 15 years old in hard to reach places like Iraq? It's a tough question. I'm just wondering if there's any thoughts on how to reach younger children. Have you dealt with under 15 in your programs? Actually, we did. At our center, we offer services and activities for kids from the age of three until the age of 65. And this is what we try to do. So what we try to do and it's very important to start this process at a very young age because when kids are younger, they are ready to absorb everything and they are ready to learn new things and they become what you want them to become. So you inculcate the values of leadership of citizenship, of civic engagement at a very young age. So when there are teenagers or when they are in their 20s, they know what an NGO is. They know what a political party is. They know they are skilled enough to make the change because sometimes motivation is not sufficient. You have to be skilled enough to make this change efficient and this is the role of programs like this, like the generation change and other programs of the United States Institute of Peace is they are training these people and they are young people and they are providing them with techniques, strategies and skills to be more efficient and more effective in their communities. I think that's a very strong point about children living up or down to expectations. That's quite true. There's a lot of evidence now there was a search for common ground and several youth organizations came together to measure the impact of peace building programs in Congo, Nepal and Colombia and it was young people who led the research to understand what the impact has been and one of the key findings in this is that when young children are invested in as partners, when young children are involved in peace education activities, they actually are more likely to stay involved in peaceful activities as they grow older. They are more likely to get involved with NGOs that are promoting peace. They are more likely to actually intervene in family violence and address domestic violence in a constructive way and that's the evidence that is coming from investing in children and we have programs in Lebanon, for example, where kindergarten students are learning, where there is in Lebanon, where there are Syrian populations, host communities, Lebanese and Palestinians, children learning from each other, how to understand each other and those skills I think are really critical as they grow older because that's what we need but the challenge though is how we amplify that. So the majority of young people in the Middle East, for example, in the question is in the Middle East, are seen as partners in peace. I would try, yes and also we don't have to wait until these young people are radicalized to start the process of de-radicalization. Our role now is to create a generation of young people who are able to say no to an extremist group that is trying to recruit them. It's protecting and providing and all these kids with skills and values and trainings to prevent them from becoming potential extremists and they would like to give an example of one of the projects that we have now at the center is a one-year project called social mediation. So it's the first session we trained, it was a training of trainers so we trained trainers to become social mediators. Second session was dedicated to night watch to train them in social mediation skills and the third session is for students and teenagers, teachers, people working at the administration in different schools and parents and we are training them in social mediation, conflict resolution and peace building with the focus on school violence and why we didn't invite like university students it was actually for this reason is that we are investing in a generation of the future that is creating a better tomorrow. There is a question that doesn't answer yet that we haven't answered yet. My name is Rebecca and I'm from Nigeria and my question is a director to the doctor. I'm very intrigued by the cognitive function of the brain as you've described and even though I understand that your studies are still ongoing I'm wondering if there are key findings you know that can help us what's the correlation you know between the way the brain works and violent conflict because as programmers we are constantly looking for strategies and ways to create programs you know that can reach our people so I think these these studies are really really vital so that our approach is both scientific and arts at the same time and secondly is there a direct correlation between the way the brain works and experiences people have had you know and how how does that work because that also will largely shape the way we create programs and design trauma yes people because throughout these two days I've heard from my fellow peace builders the kind of things people have seen and I can't just begin to imagine how does that work and how does that affect how we now you know do our intervention at the local level okay my name is Imran Alhajibuba from Nigeria my question is is also directed to Dr. Emil uh in the recent past like most of the countries facing security challenges countries like Nigeria Somalia often the explanation is that most of the young people the joint terror groups are anti-plugium people illiterate but in the last ways we observed influx of educated sometimes employed people from elite background traveling to countries like Iraq and Syria to join terror organizations as a scientist is there any scientifically such to explain this kind of situation where people that have a good life also taking these kind of actions thank you so my question will be for the two youth leaders Victoria and Skyner so you've been talking about your great work with youth and how we'll be engaged in civic engagement and in social engagement for this youth but at the same time you're talking about the lack of trust between youth and government officials with youth and other communities within your society so building trust between youth and youth alone can help in building peace or would it be more efficient to involve other conflict other party like the example that we saw with His Holiness Dalilema that is influencing either younger people so would it be great for building peace to engage other people to try to be trust between youth and government officials between youth and political parties as well so that would be my question for you and thank you in the findings I know it's preliminary yeah well I think the the place it's at now is we know now what it looks like in the brain some kind of key regions that might be of interest so for example we know there's a region right here in the in the kind of behind the middle front forehead that that codes for how much you value something and you might not even realize how much you value it but the amount of activity you get here codes for your subjective value of something so you can measure directly how much something someone values some and the reason why this is important is we can see that the amount of activity people have in this region predicts their behavior better than how much they think they'll be affected so if you if you give smokers who have an intention to quit smoking if you show them three different ads and you ask them which one is going to be most effective they'll make their choice you know A then B then C if you look at their brains their brains actually have a different response their brains say that they'll think C then B then A and when they've tested it on actual smokers they find that with the actual smokers the smokers call into the quit number more often for C then B then A so it was the brains of the smokers that predicted the behavior not their kind of self-report and so so that seems to be a brain region that's that's of interest that kind of gives us some information that we can't get from the people themselves so another really important finding so far is is the effect of trauma on the brain so there have been some preliminary studies looking at kids who have been in really difficult environments and looking at how their brains are different than kids who have been in in less conflict written environments and they find that the the regions that are most effective just by structure that they're not as developed are these lateral prefrontal regions and and why that's important is these are the regions of the brain that that give you your emotional control so these regions are active when you're trying to control your anger for example so these are the regions that seem to be most affected by a traumatic past but importantly again that the lesson from neuroscience is that none of this is is fake right that you can you can develop these parts of your brain you can rewire you can relearn so all of this doesn't mean that that the kids are are doomed it just means that that we now are getting some markers of where we can look in the brain for for the for the types of processes that we're interested maybe I can generalize the second question just a little bit because it is broader it is education is not allowed yeah it's possible that educated brawndoers and so what's the additional factor that turns education into something positive when it comes to peace building and mediating conflict yeah well well first let me I think that the question is really great like we we want to know how so we kind of understand that people can be coerced into a violent extremist group but why would someone like consciously choose someone who's educated why would they consciously choose and I think one of the the the bits of information we're getting is that we humans are really susceptible to thinking in terms of us and them so not just me and you but us and them and we just kind of do this automatically too often and once you do that then sometimes your deep love for your own group can motivate you then to to to fight against the other group and we've seen this in history that a lot of the the Germans who committed a lot of the atrocities during world war two they did it not out of any hatred towards the Jews but they did it for deep love for their group right that that that this message was very strong in Nazi Germany and we see this throughout history that oftentimes the thing that motivates people to act is is their deep feeling for their own group so one of the lessons for that I think is that to combat this you might just try to work on decreasing this perception that there's an in group and an out group right so to break down that barrier between us and them and I think that's another process that the Dalai Lama talked a lot about with us right that that it's not just empathy that you have to foster right because empathy for your own group might be a motivating force to take you into violence it's it's the universal empathy it's it's the idea that uh that that you and I are the same that there's no difference between us and them that that doesn't exist and so to combat that I think is uh is an important step in the process and what so I mean that I rather than the master okay I'd I'd like to answer and Nadia's and and and uh question and I will try to link it to with um uh Silvio's question so it's uh it's a it's a good question in a sense that sometimes we ask for um politicians trust and we we uh we complain on how politicians don't trust youth and we as youth we don't trust each other so I think that we need to work more on on on our self esteem believe in ourselves as youth because we see uh ourselves in in in others and if we strongly believe that we can make the change and we are able to be responsible and in a decision making in decision making uh position and be the the the the the the change that we want to see in others I think at at that point we will work together uh to uh to make politicians uh trust us but at the same time trust it's not something you ask for you can't go like to to the politician asking could you please trust me I mean from a personal experience um um I think that's what you need to do and what we all need to do as young people is to believe in what we do uh lead by example an action and never give up and at that moment you don't even need to ask for recognition um uh or trust or uh appreciation because your actions will speak for you and for uh Silvio when he said that uh the government failed to stop the the the the violence in the country I think if we depend uh solely on the government the change might never come um I believe that the the real change comes from the bottom and that we need to start from from from uh ourselves and we need to start dealing with with with these issues differently because uh the the issues we are facing today and not the ones we were facing like decades ago but still we're still using the same techniques strategies and it won't work we always talk about exclusion and poverty and uh economic exclusion and political exclusion but there are other factors that we neglect like identity for example the the this feeling the the lack and the absence of of the the sense of belonging to your country so when you don't feel that you belong to the can to your country when you fail to identify yourselves with the values of your country so how would you be able to be uh or like to participate in the in the in the improvement of you of your country and as just an example last summer Morocco uh like had a big wave of Moroccans uh who flew to Turkey and from Turkey they crossed the borders to Europe pretending they are Syrian refugees and unfortunately we had at least three or four people members of the our culture center who did this plus others from my neighborhood so when you see yourself and when you see young people who are denying their own identity it's really something scary when they are trying to be someone else they are not so how can we uh participate in in in the betterment of our community if we feel that we are not even part of this community Victoria have anything to add about building trust yeah I would like to say that trust and respect go and in hand and trust must be earned it's not something that you can get overnight it's something that you have to work for it's something that you have to prove through your actions so for us to be able to get trust with other youths like ourselves with other leaders we must not think about we must not think about what we can get from them but we must think more about what we want to give we must think more about what we have to offer it doesn't matter if they betray us it doesn't matter if they don't prove trust back but we must be able to show that our identity our self-identity carries certain values that define who we are so if we are able to do that I'm very sure that we'll make it to make a lot of difference well let me just conclude first by thanking everyone in this room for a really inspired meal for the last few days and the Dalai Lama said this this morning the Dalai Lama said this this morning that he was encouraged by meeting with this group so it wasn't just they were encouraged by meeting with him and I think that's really extraordinary so I thank our panelists we're grateful to the Dalai Lama for the time he gave us we're grateful to the U.S. Institute of Peace for convening us thank you and Nancy do have a few final thoughts well let me just simply echo the thanks so kind of said earlier in this conversation that she was walking away from the dialogue filled with hope you just mentioned that the Dalai Lama was as well I hope everyone in this room is walking away with hope and everybody who's joining us through the live stream we have the opportunity to really take as his holiness the Dalai Lama said the 20th century which was a century of violence and conflict and move us forward collectively into the 21st century and make it the century of peace and dialogue and that will take the concerted collective action the determination and the wisdom that we've heard here today and that we heard from this whole group of youth youth leaders over the past two days so I thank all of you for the inspiration I've learned a lot I thank you Michael for moderating the panel just this evening thank you to our panelists thank you again to his holiness the Dalai Lama to his office and a special thanks to his audio visual team who have made this live stream from Dharmsala in the middle of a rainstorm possible good night thank you everyone