 Welcome to this session about what to do with long-standing conflicts. What have we learned? What has changed? What are the new trends in conflicts? And what are the new trends in conflict resolution? To do that, we have a great and fascinating way of connecting around the world. We have, this is part of a very innovative approach from the World Economic Forum. They are connecting 40 cities. In each city, we have the global shapers, the new, young, dynamic group of people around the world who are discussing 10 issues that have been identified as the main challenges for the world ahead. And today we're going to have four of them. Each of them will represent the views. They have had discussions about these topics for a while. And we're going to have the benefit of having them with us. We will also have a distinguished panel. We have all of you and we have the world through social media. And you can connect with us. You can send your questions, your comments. The hashtag is shaping conflict. And we have a global shaper from South Africa with us. Duncan Luke, who is going to collect your tweets and comments and questions and present them to bring them to the conversation. Let me start with the panel. I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves. And why don't we start to my far right? You asked us to do this very briefly. Juan Carlos Pinzón, Minister of Defense from Colombia. Thank you. I'm Helen Clark, Head of the United Nations Development Program. Which works a lot on the road from war and conflict back to peace and stability. Jean-Marie Guainot, President of the International Crisis Group. Previously under secret for peacekeeping at the UN. And also Chairman of the Mediation Foundation, the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue. So those of you that want to know more about your panel, you can look at them and you'll discover that we have concentrated in this panel decades of insights and experience and knowledge about conflicts, causes, tragedies and solutions. And we have, we're very lucky to have with us from around the world, we have in Gaza, Asma Aboud Mezid. Hello, Asma. Hello, how are you? Fine, thank you. From, from Juba in Juba, we have Edmund Giacani. Hello Edmund. Hi, hello. Welcome from Sri Lanka, Colombo, Mahina, Bonkso. Hello Mahina. Hi everyone, it's nice to get involved in this and meet everyone and hear to what everyone has to say. Thank you. From Salvador, Alejandro Poma, Alejandro, how are you? Hi Moises, great to be here. It's 4 a.m. in San Salvador and we're very excited and captivated. Apologies for making you wake up this early. So all of you have been meeting with other shapers and you have had spirited debates about these issues. Why don't I start with Mahina in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Mahina, tell us some of the highlights of your conversations. We're especially interested in learning about new things. What is new? Are there new ways of approaching conflicts or new ways in which conflicts are manifesting themselves or anything that has changed in the world of conflict? In Sri Lanka, we have just come out of a 30-year-long war. We actually ended the war in 2009 and there has been peace and development in the country. There's been a lot of focus on really rebuilding from where we stopped. The war really drained the country of its resources, of its youngsters and also of much needed time. Now the country is seeing a lot of youth participation, a lot of interest from the youth in living in a better country, in having more tolerance amongst each other, having more empathy amongst each other. A very good example of how much the youth has involved in civic participation is when we saw in January the recent presidential election that was held, which was very much youth led in terms of how the two main presidential election candidates really used the youth and used social media to really bring out their messages. So we're really seeing a lot of youth getting involved in monitoring whether the government that has been elected has really stuck to its promises, really monitoring their performance and being very critical. Incidentally, there were one million Sri Lankan voters who took part, new voters who took part in the recent election and those voters were mainly youth. That's very interesting. Jamari Waheno, the International Crisis Group, the organisation you had, has had a long-standing interest in Sri Lanka and its conflict. What do you say to what you just heard? Well, I think what happened with the election in Sri Lanka, many people were surprised because they underestimate how society can organise itself. And when the people, as you just said, are able to connect, then they become aware of their own power. And many situations don't move when that connection doesn't happen, when the power of seeing that you are not alone, that there are other people who think like you and that together you can make a difference. When that happened, that's very powerful. I've seen it in other places. I remember in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where change is not happening the way we would like, but the way women have connected throughout Congo has changed the role of women in the country. Thank you. From Gaza, asthma, tell us what have been some of your conversations, please. Well, what's new in the conflict is that Gaza is entering its eighth year of blockade, and it has just survived another aggression in 2014 that lasted for 50 days and resulted in destruction of the infrastructure in the health, in the education, in the private, public and industrial sector. And what's new is that nothing new about the reconstruction process, it still hasn't started and people are still living in shelters suffering from the weather and the winter and with no potentials of any early start for the reconstruction. Now, what the youth have done or what's their role in this process in Gaza, we looked at it from a different perspective. We looked at it from political, economic, as well as social perspective. And in the political situation, youth doesn't have the ability to be part of the decision-making, but they have done something during the last aggression and they use the social media to raise the awareness about the Palestinian suffering in Gaza and what is actually happening. So what we discussed is that we need leadership that utilizes these young people and the talents of the Palestinian people to have more voice. From the economic perspective, although the youth are a recipient of aid and they are the largest recipient, we believe that entrepreneurship could be a way to rebuild and restore confidence and to participate in the economic recovery in the Gaza Strip. Thank you very much. It's an interesting take on a long-standing tragedy. Helen Clark, the UNDP, you are the leader of the United Nations Development Program. You have a presence there. Tell us both about what you're doing and what are the challenges. Why is it that the United Nations and the donor community is not more present according to what we just heard? There are limits to what the international community is doing there. Well, firstly, I went to Gaza early last year and I met our staff there and also had an incredible meeting with civil society. And what really impressed me from that meeting was just the – not only the resilience of the people I met but actually the positivity. Just like we've heard just now from Asma, looking forward, what could we do? The political situation is pretty stuck. The geopolitics is pretty stuck. But what could we do as young people or as women's organizations, human rights organizations, which would make a difference? So, you know, my heart goes out to those who stay so positive in what seems like overwhelmingly daunting circumstances. What do we do? Well, we exist to try and support people to find their pathway to peace, their livelihoods, get the basic infrastructure going. But as Asma has just reminded us, Gaza has just been through a war. A lot of what has been done has been knocked flat again. And what Gaza overwhelmingly needs is a peace settlement, which is above the pay grade of Asma and above the head of the development agency. It needs great powers pushing on all sides to get a settlement which will enable the people of Gaza to live in peace and pursue their development and human potential. Thank you very much, Helen. Let me go to San Salvador. Alejandro Pomad, tell us about your conversations, about any insights from your discussions. Well, the month of January is important for us. We're a little further removed from our civil war than the other colleagues around the table. This January marked the 23rd anniversary of our peace accord. That is something that is always an important symbol for our country. And it reminds us that we are able to achieve things that at one point seemed almost impossible to achieve. So it always provides a sense of hope. It reaffirms that we are capable of achieving great things. But at the same time, we're now in a new stage of our history where we're now confronted with a new cycle of violence. And these are the present challenges we're facing. Unfortunately, we have one of the highest homicide rates in the world. On average, there's about 12 homicides daily. In the past month and a half, about 37 policemen have been killed. And this is once again in a scenario where we're not in a civil conflict anymore, but we are now facing due to gang violence tremendous difficulties. However, it is the use of El Salvador, which are becoming much more engaged in trying to have solutions to these problems in promoting dialogue that is constructive, that leads to action, and that will allow us to overcome these problems, just as we did the daunting task of signing a civil war peace accord 23 years ago. Thank you, Alejandro. Juan Carlos Pinzón, you're the Minister of Defense of Colombia and there's an opportunity here for helping each other with experiences. El Salvador had a very nasty civil war and they had a peace process that led to the end of that war. You are now engaged in a peace process and also in a long-standing war with the FARC and there may be lessons there that I'm sure you have already looked at, but at the same time now El Salvador has a problem with criminality and murder that you had in Colombia in the past, but you were able to solve it. Colombia is one of the success stories of the world in terms of tackling armed violence from gangs and crime, the crime rate, the murder rate. So could you please talk about both things, peace processes and negotiating ends to civil war and at the same time how do you tackle effectively soaring murder rates? Well, I think as everybody knows we have been in the middle of a conflict for a very long time, but I would say in the past decade and a half we have been able to put together a permanent strategy to really move away from conflict and that has several implications. The first of all was to really strengthen the armed forces because security at the end is critical to really provide services, state services presence. What anyone can forget is that conflict anyway is related to deeper roots than just violence itself. It's always related to corruption, lack of state, lack of health, lack of in general terms presence of the state. Our strategy has been really to cope the national territory and in consequence to I would say slower than I wish, but anyway happening increasing the presence of the state. That has allowed us to really increase every security statistic that you can think. Homicides, just to give you one number for this year, went from 32 per hundred thousand to 27.5 per hundred thousand. So it's a series reduction for a country like Columbia 15 years ago was around 60 to 70 homicides per hundred thousand. So we're moving forward and I think this environment has created the possibility for the leadership of President Santos and the will of the country to really solve the country, solve the problem. So this is why we're in the middle of this peace process. This process is advancing, no doubt that we're getting into the important decisions, but anyone can tell that we are closer than ever. I have to tell that on this effort the way the armed forces of Columbia have performed has been critical. First because they got a lot of legitimacy, I mean the acceptance and the way the public refers to the armed forces in Columbia is higher probably than any other place in the world. In essence because they recover us our security and protect the population as a critical effort. Second I think is because they have been engaged in a broader perspective of action. We have been able to engage into interagency effort and we have been able to put the armed forces to do things that maybe is not their role but we have been able to use their channel to be able to use them on even public works and these kind of efforts that in very far away areas where nobody else will solve problems has been very useful. I think this is a very important contribution to the peace effort that is happening right now in Columbia. Thank you Juan Carlos and let's go from Latin America from Columbia, let's go to Sudan, let's go to Yuba. Edmund, how are you? Tell us about your conversations. Thank you. Our conversation is more or less in similar context like what my sister said in Gaza because our situation is exactly like the situation of Gaza where we have peace for a while and stable go back to violence. So the experience that in our discussions we have come to around is we have experienced this with displacement of families, division of families, loss of opportunities like job opportunities, reduction in livelihoods, people get disconnected, increase in income. Oops. Well, we got disconnected. I'm sure they're already working on it. Jean-Marie, while we get reconnected, tell us your initial reactions to what we began to hear. Well, what I find really tragic actually in South Sudan is that there has been, to be frank, I think there's been a failure of leadership there and that if the leaders of Sudan were doing their job properly, we would not be where we are. There are lots of local conflicts. There is a vibrant civil society that could bring together the great diversity of Sudan, South Sudan, and that is not happening. Good. Let's go back. You're back. Sorry about that, Edmund. Go ahead. Continue, please. Yeah, I'm back. One thing that also the youth have discussed and have realized among ourselves is that there's this phenomenon of generational clash between the generation which is running the state institutions, the state agencies, and the population of the youth which constitutes 70% of the population. So there's a generational clash which is going on. Another element that also the youth have realized is there's this strategy of where you find politics are militarized and you find also that politicians try to link politics and military together. So elements of where you find politics are militarized while military is politicized. And that has brought a lot of friction that sustainability and stability can't last for long. So I think some of the issues that the youth have brought up. Thank you very much. Let me ask, and Jean-Marie already had alluded to the problem of failure of leadership in Sudan and the difficulty of having a unifying kind of leadership and group. And therefore the hope, as you say, Edmund, is that from the youth comes the opportunity for that. And I want to ask you, Edmund, and all of the three global shapers, the notion about the youth being, you know, that age unifies on homogenizes, which is a heroic assumption we have here, is that all the youth in your countries are more or less homogeneous and share views, and that's not true as we know. So I want to give you a chance to each one of you to tell us a little bit about if the youth are fragmented. What are the lines within which the young groups and young people are divided? Let's continue, Edmund, with that, please. Yeah, from the perspective of South Sudan in Cuba, is that the youth are divided to urban youth, which are a bit educated, and you have massive population of the youth in the rural areas, which are really not educated. So you find among the youth there's a clash between the urban-based youth and the rural-based youth. The urban-based youth are well-informed and they have demands, they want to see that rights are respected, why the rural youth are vulnerable, that they are being manipulated by politicians, and always they find that they do clash with the urban. The urban are pushing for democratic transformation, why the rural, because of their economical vulnerability, they are used by the politicians, and they clash with the urban-based youth. So I think this is the experience we had in South Sudan. That's why I can hear language use of white army, you can hear militia groups which are really named under youth movement, so like youth armed group clashing with the youth in the rural areas, while urban youth doesn't have such experiences. Interesting. Thank you, Edmund. Asma, what about Gaza? Tell us about how the youth in Gaza are divided. What are the lines of division? Well, basically it's not a question of division among the youth, but it's a matter of prioritization. For example, young people, when they graduate from the university, they look for jobs and with this economy and political instability, their main focus is to provide their human needs, the basic human needs. Therefore, there is no space for them to think about development or to think about what we can do in our society, because when you lack the basic needs, how can you think of other needs and self-respect and actualization? However, at the time of the crisis, like in 2014 during the war, the Palestinian youth showed amazing spirit whether in helping people who were displaced in shelters and also in utilizing the social media to raise the awareness. Furthermore, socially, the youth wanted to have an opportunity to express themselves. Therefore, they do initiative that reinforce the human values in the Palestinian society, such as mutual respect and cooperation. However, these initiatives are individual and separated, because as I said, it's a matter of prioritization. And when you look at 45% as unemployment rate and high poverty rate, people have different prioritization and needs. Thank you. Thank you. Alejandro, in El Salvador. I think there's a few ways that you can segment the way youth are maybe divided across society. The clearest one is those that belong to a gang and those that don't belong to a gang. Somewhere in the middle, there are also what I would consider at-risk youth. So youth that are vulnerable to being attracted to the gang offer. At the same time, I think you have another division going on that was mentioned in one of our conversations today. And that is that you have a segment of the youth that have access to the market, that have access to the state that are more, let's say, connected to these entities. And then there's another significant part of the youth population that is not as connected and not as included in participating in these entities. So there's a few ways to divide that up and that I just think adds to the complexity which we're dealing with in trying to solve the problems and attack the issues that are affecting the youth. So it's totally agree with you in that you cannot throw one blanket over the whole youth population as you cannot just have a cookie cutter approach to a solution to the problems that the youth are facing. Thank you. And in Sri Lanka, Mahina, tell us. Yes, I mean, listening to what Juba and Salvador and also what Gaza had to say, there was a lot of things that were in common here in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, the division is mostly due to, as my fellow friend from Juba said, it is the divide in the sense of urban and rural youth. The urban youth are more informed, are more able to actively engage than their counterparts in the rural area. For example, the digital divide is a very important thing that we could discuss because social media is playing a huge part and especially in Sri Lanka we've seen social media playing a huge part and that is mostly centered in urban areas and does not have that much of a reach in rural areas. And also the problems of youth are different from which areas they come from. Rural youth have a separate set of problems that make them more vulnerable to be fed with certain ideologies. Whereas youth in the urban area are more informed and they are not as susceptible to these ideologies. However, I would also like to stress that after a certain time, after a 30-year-old war has ended in Sri Lanka, there's one thing that all youth have in common and that is not to really suffer from such a catastrophe again because most of the youth aged from between 15 to 29 were born into the war. They have been war babies. They have not known anything else other than war. So now when there is a change from war to peace, we also see a change in youth from being restricted to being more liberal. So right now the divide is trying to be bridged through various exchange programs here in Sri Lanka where youth from different ethnicities are encouraged to really mingle with each other through various projects and various programs that are being initiated. And one thing that is really a binding glue amongst everybody is the culture and how culture can play a huge part in bridging this divide between youth from all areas of Sri Lanka. Thank you. Mahina Bokso from Colombo. Let me bring from South Africa Duncan Luke who's not in South Africa. He's here and he's been collecting the comments that are coming from social media. Luke, tell us what are people saying, asking? At the moment I say the hashtag shaping conflict. Please get involved in the audience as well. We want to hear your views. Use the hashtag. We want to get more opinions. I think a lot of conversations come from the stage. We need more from social media. Please. Thank you. Okay. Good. So let's hear from the panel. What are some of your reactions, for example, about the way in which the youth can be mobilized, energized and become more of a player, at the same time recognizing that the youth is a wide category that has different segments. Let me start from Carlos and then walk the way through the back. Well, let me comment a little bit on some of the things I just hear. One, no doubt that, I mean, even if you saw conflict as it appears, it has happened in at least three of the cases, there is always the risk of coming back to certain kind of violence and certain kind of new kind of conflict, not necessarily represented by the same actors, but anyway, just representing violence among the people. I think that tackling the issue of the youth is critical. One of my own personal experiences moving along my country from place to place is really to see and guarantee, and that's a challenge we have, that these youth people that is coming out in the future, they will not be recruited by terrorist groups or armed groups, but they will be recruited by gangs if we don't do some kind of effort to guarantee education and jobs, and that's critical. We have to see this conflict resolution environment beyond just the effort of ceasing violence in a stage. And a central point there to keep in mind is that we are all for the youth engagement and participation, but let's also recall that the youth can also engage in armed conflict and become terrorists and become very violent. And I think it's very important to keep in mind that when we're talking about youth engagement, we're also talking about youth engage in very nasty conflicts. Helen? Yeah, well the key thing is to provide the ways for the youth to engage positively because where you have exclusion and marginalisation and the only money that's going around is from gangs to get you to do bad things, well that is an option, sadly people will go for. So there's also a socioeconomic side to this that youth need opportunity, they need skills, they need education, they need livelihoods, they need a basis for a dignified life. But I want to come back to a couple of other issues that have been raised. Firstly on leadership, absolutely critical and often not in great supply, but if we take Columbia, I am a huge admirer of what President Santos has achieved. I don't think it was easy to launch a peace process in Columbia and a peace process without a ceasefire and soldiers kept getting killed, police kept getting killed, but he's stuck with it. He persuaded the voters to give him a second term and I think we're that close now to a settlement. But as the defence minister said, in a way then the hard work begins to overcome the legacy of all this and not to see an ongoing high level of violence and citizen insecurity as El Salvador has seen as has been explained this morning. So I think peace settlements is one thing and often they're not sticking, we're seeing that in South Sudan, we see settlements reached and then they disintegrate and so on. So in driving forward I think we have to recognise that there's much deeper issues around building cohesion, building dialogue, bringing the youth in, bringing the women in, building the institutions that will encourage interaction between people. The bottom up process of building peace, not a top down one that says oh the leaders have agreed and then they go away and disagree, we've got to engage whole societies in this. And my last point is how powerful social media can be in this. Social media is a mobilising tool, it's an interacting tool. I recall from earlier times of the upheaval in Egypt one of the activists saying, you know we use Facebook to get the crowd to the rally. We tweet from the rally and then we put the videos on YouTube. They're very insightful as to how these media can be used. Obviously not everyone has equal access to these media. But I think as a democratising and engaging force it can be tremendously useful and can be used for peace. Thank you, Jean-Marie. When you were asking the question I was reminded of my first experience as a peacekeeper. I was in a camp in Sierra Leone in 2000 and I had to speak to about 100 youth who were not like the four friends we have on the screen. They were former combatants who had committed atrocities. Their youth had been stolen by war and I had to talk to them. And what struck me really and it reflects also the divide between rural and urban youth. These youth they had been manipulated and they had committed atrocities in some ways because they thought that was a way to ensure their security. And so I think what's so important for the youth in countries emerging from conflict is that ensuring their security is not taking a gun to go shoot the people who feel they threatened them but rather to organise themselves in very local community based structures so that there is a feeling of security because that's the first good. They want jobs but the first job they're offered is a gun to shoot and they have no other expertise so to speak than to shoot. And they have to be helped in what they really want which is not to shoot which is to have a life, to have a decent life. And for that I think local experience and there has been some for instance in Haiti with gangs in Haiti where traditional disarmament as the United Nations does it didn't really work. They were urban gangs there and so you had to work at a very local community level. In some Brazilian NGOs that have done wonderful work in Haiti precisely keeping those young people in the neighbourhood where they were but making them discover that there was another way to run that neighbourhood than protection and racket. Such an important point. We have heard some very interesting points. Let's hear from the audience here. Is there anyone here that has a question or comment? Just raise your hands. Oh here we have. Just tell us who you are and briefly. I'm Caroline Spellman. I'm a British politician, formerly environment secretary. Does the panel think that one of the benefits of social media it allows society to express its desire for peace? One of the difficulties is often leaders want war but the silent majority don't get an easy way to show how much they really don't want that, especially women. Thank you. And why don't I let our global shapers, one of them, who wants to answer that question? Colombo, Gaza, Juba, San Salvador, raise your hand if you want to answer about the role of social media in channeling the real wishes of the majority. Penmun, go ahead. Yeah, I think social media play a big role in terms of spreading information, spreading opinion and mobilizing our opinions and mobilizing decisions. I'll give an example recently when we have our crisis in South Sudan in mid-December. We have really social media play a bigger role in informing people actually what the crisis is. If you hear, there's a much more message getting out there. It is an ethnic classist. But what we know in South Sudan is within South Sudan the real problem. It is an internal competition within the ruling party between the two top leaders and the social media which proved that. And even some of the politicians, some of the ruling members in the party also start joining the social media and start uploading actual information that look here. This is the areas where we disagree on. And that has diffused the rate of the violence spreading all across the country. And I think really I do agree. Social media play a big role and we can use social media for peace. And we can use social media to cut down engagement of youth in bad issues because my concern is that if we can open up social media in such a way that youth can have access to social media. For example, as my sister and I have mentioned that the rural areas may not have access to social media like the urban youth. But the initiatives now we are picking up is can we create stations of social media? Can we create institutions that promote social media in the rural areas so that the dialogue between the urban and the rural can continue? So that's what I would like to say that social media play a big role. Interesting. Asma, I saw that you also wanted to say something. Asma, although as you said the social media are very important but they are only one factor that affects the desire of people and the status of things. For example, Palestinians through social media and all type of media have been demanding the lifting of the blockade for eight years so far but nothing has changed. Also during the last aggression on Gaza in 2004 they also have been demanding the stop of the war and the lifting of the siege and the end of the occupation but also nothing has happened so far. So it's not only about using social media alone it's about having the whole community whether it's local community or international community to stand as well and to do action rather than just demanding things. We need things on action. And Gaza there is a long way to go towards lifting the siege and the start of the reconstruction process as well. Thank you, Asma. And again, from the audience, any questions? Over there, please. Tell us who you are, please. Good morning. Sorry. Good morning, my name is Francis Malish. I work at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and I'm based in Ukraine which is one of the areas where conflict resolution would be needed one of these days. I had a question actually as to the interaction between the grassroots that's admirable and we see from the screen and we heard about and the leadership role in resolving the conflict. So how does this play out? What triggers the other? Do we need one before the other? How does this play out? Great question. Thank you. Let me comment a little bit on practical tools that we have been able to develop in order to confront the realities we find in the field. I think one very important tool has been creating a policy of interagency work. That that sounds very obvious and kind of very natural is not so easy to happen. It really starts to happen in our case just five years ago in which we really were able to bring in other agencies of the state where the security forces were already present and being in the ground. I think that's critical, having that kind of efforts. Second, a permanent individual humanitarian demobilization program. There is always the possibility that particularly young people can suddenly decide that they are in the wrong way or that they feel too much too much pressure. Whatever the case, nothing is better in a conflict than saving lives. And the demobilization program allows you to create a permanent, somehow commercials and some others will say propaganda, but at the end what you're trying to do is getting young people or whomever wants to get out of the conflict of the violence. That'll be the second part. Third, we make a decision to integrate into our military capabilities the police efforts. That as well sounds very obvious, but it's quite difficult to happen. When you get that, you're really getting a very effective tool because in this kind of conflict if you go just for the military solution suddenly you will find fighting the military among the people and that's a risky business. It creates the risk for human rights issues and other serious problems. But if you have the military working together with the police and police units really judicializing all these crimes that happen around conflict that are at the end the source of funding for violence you can really go after bad guys. Demining will be another very important feature to have among other tools that we have been developing. I will add by saying conflict resolution at the end requires leadership as you said, decision in order to know when to go and end but at the end of the time a very innovative attitude, a very innovative attitude. Innovation in conflict is vital because whomever is in crime, whomever is fighting is always responding faster than states can and here's where you have to be innovative both providing social, economic policies to solve problems fast but at the same time allowing your security services to provide security. Go ahead. I'm interested in the question about that interaction between leadership and grassroots and where's the main push for peace coming I guess in my observation there's not so many leaders like President Santos who stand out front and say follow me, follow me on a path to peace and I'll start addressing some of the basic issues around the land rights, the poverty, the marginalization, the exclusion and so on. So we don't have it and a leader like that needs the grassroots also to come on board because you can get quite lonely as a leader standing out front if people aren't coming behind. I've been a Prime Minister I know what that feels like but unfortunately not in these kind of extreme situations but where that sort of leadership isn't there then I think the role of the grassroots in pushing the leaders to do what needs to be done is extremely important. I just wanted to give one example it's not necessarily related to a conflict but it's one where things could have gone off the rails. The last election in Senegal looked like being quite a messy one. It was tough fought and what made a big difference there was the women got mobilized we want Senegal to continue as a peaceful country which transfers power constitutionally and peacefully and results are accepted. They reached out to the youth, they started the peace caravans going through the country to urge for peace and calm between different groups of supporters and people so they approached the leaders and what was the outcome? It was successful the leaders said yeah we've got to behave in a certain way we're not going to sort of rack up these mobs we're trying to attack each other and it worked out okay that was a great example of leadership from the grassroots and there are a lot of such examples. It is a good example Jean-Marie. I want to say a word on the leadership grassroots connection but also follow up on what Asma said. On the leadership grassroots connection I think a lot has to do with the design of peace negotiations. More often than not of course the negotiation has to be first with those who have the guns because if those of the guns are not in the negotiation you're not going to go very far but at the same time you have to provide a forum for those who have no guns to be part of the process and there are some negotiations where that has been done and some where that has been ignored and then you don't have a real good result because those who are the future of the country have been ignored but on the question of Asma and social media I think this is a really fundamental issue and also on media they are a multiplier. They help build communities but they can be very closed communities within a particular country where social media can mean that you talk to the people who think like you instead of building a broader platform and so the social media they can bring a country together they can also tear it apart and then the other thing and I think that's what Asma was alluding to the conversation in a country may be very different from the global conversation and what we need is really, I mean for instance in Gaza is a case in point the way the people in Gaza experience the life in Gaza who understands it outside Gaza? Who understands it in the United States? Who understands it in Europe? You can have a hashtag but will it be a hashtag that will be followed in the same proportions by the people in Gaza and the people in New York or Paris or London and that's what we need to work hard to change. Let me just jump a little bit. That's a great point. Briefly. Very briefly. Problems are local and I think your vision on that is very right. Even in a country like mine when we go and try to solve problems depending on where you are the approach has to be real different. Let me provoke you and our global shapers and the audience into a very thorny problem which is about leadership. It has been mentioned that leadership is a requirement that failures of leadership explain a lot of these tragedies that difficulties of finding leaders. So leadership is easy to diagnose and easy to prescribe but it's very paralyzing. It's a very paralyzing prescription. If you go to a country that is suffering from a massive societal challenge and you say, well, you need leadership. Well, thank you very much. When I have to confess and I think I captured the mood of the room when we hear these four individuals from around the world I want them to be leaders. I am more enthusiastic about them and I want them to be in charge rather than some of the leaders in their respective countries. How do we then solve the conundrum of getting leadership when there's any... How do we stop from prescribing something that is so obvious but yet so hard to get? Let me ask... I don't know who to ask, everyone. Let me ask Alejandro Palma who hasn't said anything for a while. Alejandro, what do you think? I heard you a little bit interrupted so I didn't get the whole gist of the message but I'll try to answer from what I got. Leadership... We talked about this today in one of our conversations in The Hub. There's not a messianic Superman or woman that's going to pop up and miraculously solve our society's problems. It's more about creating a critical mass of engaged people that are willing to act. Dialogue is a necessary first step. It's required to establish a shared vision and to set up some bold goals to reach but ultimately it requires a group of people working towards those goals, motivated and inspired and relentless and resilient but it's always a group that allows things to be accomplished. It's rare that a solitary individual comes along and does it on his own and I think what we have here today in San Salvador is a group of 30, 40 amazing young leaders that are engaging, that are acting, that are taking constructive action to deliver tangible results because ultimately the only way to progress and move forward is to have tangible outcomes, positive outcomes that affect people's lives in a good way and if that's not happening then people get frustrated then protagonists on the stage lose credibility and it could erode whatever good things a dialogue can provide if there's no action that produce tangible, measurable results in the improvement of individuals' lives it becomes very difficult to sustain credibility and sustain trust in the ability of society to move ahead. Thank you Alejandro. Any comments, questions, please go ahead. My name is Marie-Christine Jauria and I'm following what's happening in Gaza quite a lot and I visited Ramallah in order to see myself how things are actually there and I have a question to Helen and also to Asma because leadership is two-sided sword because if you are a leader and you are gathering a crowd behind you and all of us who are in business, we know that you also need to show to the crowd that you have the right vision and that you are able to help the crowd to guide them into the right direction and to have success otherwise you lose their follow, you lose them. So, I mean if you are such a leader and you're sitting there in the biggest prison and you see that the western world is not giving you the necessary support and is constantly rowing back so how can you be a leader? So what I would like to know is, what do you need? What can we do? What can we as individuals here do to help you to be a successful leader? Thank you. Asma, that was for you. Well, leadership as you said, it's very important and the Palestinian society and the population is a very young society so these people, if they got the right education and the awareness and the opportunity they will be leading tomorrow and they will be leading the change to have a better opportunities for Gaza and a better society. Now, regarding what individuals can do well, it's not, one hand cannot clap so you need a collective effort. So, yes, individuals can support Gazans through their solidarity and support from all over the world but this is not enough. Here in Gaza, we are due to the blockade we are disconnected physically and due to the electricity cut we are disconnected virtually as well so what is best to ensure leadership for Palestinian young people is that to break this blockade and to break the distances that is keeping us away from the whole world like having exchange programs and lifting the siege and exchanging experiences could be a very tool to empower young Palestinians in Gaza. Not only that but having a proper education and awareness about how we can deal with this conflict and how we can move forward from whatever we are experiencing is a very powerful tool for the whole world to do in Gaza. Thank you very much. Any other questions, comments? So a lot of these conflicts, of course, generate a lot of distrust and so one initial step to solve conflicts is to create trust-building measures. What are any of the new developments of the new ideas in which one can engage new tools and new groups of society and new forms of organizing to build trust in societies that have been, where mistrust is the central dominant feeling amongst groups in conflict? I think coming out of any kind of conflict or trauma, the first thing that people want is to be heard. There's got to be a truth-telling. There's got to be an ability and a capacity and a space to tell one's story and we've seen this in the way South Africa came out of a traumatic period of history, the apartheid period, the role that truth and reconciliation played. My own country, New Zealand, is still, in effect, running a long-term truth and reconciliation and reparations process for wrongs of colonization in the 19th century, so these issues aren't necessarily quickly solved, but the process, the truth-telling of what happened and the coming together to talk about that and then to find a way forward is extremely important. So I think when societies who are in a transition from something very bad to, of course, something better, these processes, the building institutions, the consultation, being inclusive as you can, this is extremely important. And if we look at one of the countries which has experienced the uprisings in the Arab states, perhaps the one that has come through in the most interesting way is Tunisia, which had a very inclusive process to reach out around a new constitution, new social contract, new settlement, and I think that's well worthy of study. Thank you. Duncan, any news from social media? Yes, I think the consensus is what can we do? So there's a lot of questions about us and what can we do? So I'm just going to read out one or two that I've picked up. The first one from Carla is how can academia contribute in keeping a balanced view of post-conflicts? There's another overlapping one. I just want to add to that. From Cristina Lopez. Must the solutions of conflict come from the people or from their governments? Thank you. So the question I think implicit is how can one bring new actors and new players that are independent, objective and helpful in creating trust, in creating dialogue, in building bridges, in finding ways for groups in conflict to start talking and start reaching ways of working together? Jean-Marie? Well, I think it starts with having a narrative that is not completely incompatible between the various actors of a conflict. So for instance, at Crisis Group, our analysts, they shuttle between the various actors, telling them, oh, we were told that. Oh, no, it's not at all what the reality is. And then gradually you come to the reality. If you don't have that kind of agreement, if you don't agree on the facts, you are unlikely to agree on the solutions. I mean, if I think of my own country, France, and the reconciliation with Germany after World War II, this was a long effort which involved acknowledging what had happened. That's very important for a sound foundation for peace. And I think the same thing for internal conflicts for civil wars. It doesn't come quickly because, of course, many people have died, they've been a lot of passion. You have to understand the narrative of your enemy. You have to understand his fears. I mean, most conflicts are born out of mutual fears. But I think this effort at truth and reconciliation, as Ellen said, but also historical truth. And when the question of academia, I think the more you can have an objective reading of what is happening, the more you can have histories that are not geared to create one narrow perspective, I think the better the chance for peace. Very good. Thank you. Another question from the audience. Yes, please. I have a sense of some kind of naivete in some of this discussion. So I want to ask perhaps a provocative question. In each of these, many of these conflicts, there are spoilers. 90% of the people will sort of agree on what a reasonable solution is. But there are those who actually have incentives to perpetuate the conflicts. Do they gain by keeping these conflicts alive? That is my perception, for instance, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think the bulk of the people sort of know where the solution lies. But somehow we can't get there because of the spoilers. So my question is, how do you deal with those who have an incentive to perpetuate these conflicts? That's a great question. And I'm going to use that question to ask each one of you final reflections about what we have heard about the conversation and especially about the notion that we are discussing conflicts without taking sufficiently into consideration the incentives of some spoilers that have reasons and, again, incentives to keep the conflict going. So why don't I start with the four shapers around the world, give you a very brief one to two minutes maximum opportunity to give us some reflection of what you have heard and also, if you can, please address the very good question about how to deal with those that don't want the conflict to end. Let me start in reverse order from what I did at the beginning. So I think I'll start with Edmund in Juba. Thank you. I think as a summary of my conclusion is that the discussions have shown very clear that though we need leadership but also we need credible state institutions that can meet the expectations of the citizens can meet the expectations of the success because in South Sudan there's much talk of leadership but we don't have those institutions. So in regard to the spoilers I think if we can set a priority for justice and accountability for perpetrators of violence I think that's really can help us with the spoilers because most of the spoilers will engage in committing human rights atrocities. At the same time also there are some spoilers who are not within the countries there are some spoilers who are outside for economical gains that the flow of arms to the hands of civilians to create market for arms. So if we can hold justice and accountability as a priority to deal with the spoilers in South Sudan also we have spoilers who doesn't want to see stability exist. They really benefit from having continuous violence among the communities and among the citizens. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was N. Munyakani the director of SEPO in South in Yuba, South Sudan. Thank you very much. Alejandro Poma in El Salvador, San Salvador please go ahead. Yes I think we have you know we're a little bit further removed from our civil war signing the peace does not guarantee that there won't occur violence if the root causes of these situations are not attacked and those root causes are multi-dimensional they're economic they're social cultural in many respects so you know we continue to work on the root causes to try to progress and move forward. Another area that's very important that the hub is very focused on is creating spaces for dialogue that will be constructive and action oriented. That was a root cause of the war initially and there were limited spaces where for expression and communication and for the participation on a more massive basis of the community in solving the country's problems and having political representation. That is one project that is actively being worked on right now that is already producing tangible results and we're very excited about that but I continue to work on the root causes is a commitment that we have going forward and hopefully that will allow us to bring great results to the complex situation we're dealing now with gang violence. Thank you very much Alejandro Poma is the managing director of Grupo Poma in Salvador San Salvador and he woke up at 4 a.m. this morning to be with us so you can go get an up once we're done. Thank you very much Alejandro. Asma Abou Mezid in Gaza please tell us your final reflections. Well in Gaza and in Palestine in general the situation is very complicated and not only locally but also on the global level because there are different factors and different parties that can influence the political situation in Gaza and as San Salvador said that we need to tackle the grassroots so talking about Gaza we need the first thing to do is to lift the siege because you cannot talk about progress and dialogue once people are only looking for their basic needs. So this is where it could start to enable a better future is that to end this siege and to end the occupation regarding the spoiler as I said not only the political situation there are different factors but also in the economic level we have in Gaza different international organization which come from different countries and unfortunately their efforts is not coordinated so having a coordination between all this effort can also result in economic recovery and sustainability thus youth will have more opportunity to think about their welfare and to think about participation in the decision making politically, economically and also socially. Thank you Asma. Asma Abou Mezid she's a researcher and a member of the global shapers. Thank you very much and then Mahina Bonsu in Colombo Sri Lanka Go ahead. Well in a conflict situation if you look at it the leadership and even those parties involved in the conflict the first set of people they really go to in times of conflict are the youth the youth are the first people they go to because the youth are the ones who need to be armed to engage in conflict at the same time it is important for the leadership and all parties following a conflict at a time of peace just as much attention you pay to youth during conflict you must pay to youth after conflict that is by encouraging them to educate them to have them actively involved in the rebuilding of a nation and that comes with really creating trust amongst youth and the rehabilitation of youth for instance in Sri Lanka we've seen six terrorist combatants being rehabilitated going through a program of rehabilitation and also giving jobs but these programs these policies need to be more streamlined more transparent where not just youth of one area or one sector but youth as an overall community are given the equal opportunities such as education, better healthcare more participation in civil society so as to not allow conflicts to arise once again in the future and also talking about spoilers yes there are always certain groups within society who don't want a conflict to end and even after a conflict ends they would always try to create certain uprisings that would lead to a conflict for example in Sri Lanka we have seen certain groups as certain extremist groups trying to really say out the extremist views and try to engage people in another unrest in another ethnocentric separatist movement but it is if the communities can all mobilize together and say no it will not go forward and also it's a lot of attention that the leadership has to play has to really show for instance during a conflict there is so much of expenditure that is put for state events and education healthcare all of that is just secondary so post conflict it is very important that allocations funds are directed towards education healthcare and also engage youth and other interested individuals in the policy making process like for instance during our panel discussion a very important recommendation was made and that was to have youth engagement in independent commissions and also have youth being mentored by politicians so that the youth will be able to engage more in politics and in the decision making process and also be sort of a mediator between the other youth groups out there so overall there is a lot of change that is happening and after conflict it is the youth who can be the vanguard of that change and it can be active agents of peace it all depends on whether they have been given the correct facilities the correct know how to engage in not letting conflicts happen again thank you very much Mahina she is a news anchor with MTV NBC Networks in Colombo Sri Lanka thank you the panel your final reflections let's start with you and then walk our way back here first remember all that violence and conflict is related to many causes it can be related to crime it can be related to corruption it can be related to really social needs and real problems so you cannot just tackle the issue of conflict with one single tool either fighting crime or defeating insurgents or just thinking that by taking social policies you will solve it all you need to put the two things together work in a very holistic and interagency effort and try to you know provide the solutions place by place second I think security is critical people in order to regain trust from state from government requires to feel secure and protected by security institutions so that's very important the legitimacy of those institutions the way they perform related to the community and by the way that will allow other agencies other private sector NGOs to really come and find the environment to really end the real roots and causes of conflict thirdly in the colombian case and I mean history hasn't been written yet we're working towards that and we hope that sooner or later we will really can call peace in Colombia but I think those that can be called the architects of peace in Colombia will be armed forces they have been leading all this effort and they have to lead the sustainability of peace effort in the future and I think that's quite interesting and probably in panels in the future about this we might see how it came it happened and how we should keep working to really sustain peace that has been a real challenge in Colombia. Thank you minister Pinzón and we wish you good luck Ellen well on the issue of spoilers there are fact of life there to be found in any society whether it's one trying to recover from trauma or one that's allegedly at peace there's always people who are destructive rather than constructive and in essence you have to drain the swamp of their support by building an overwhelming dynamic for something something better for the society and that's where I think it's important that we broaden the concept of leadership because leadership isn't just about heads of government or political parties or those sort of commanding heights leadership is within each one of us it's in civil society it's in the way we organize at the local and community level so if the so-called leaders and the geopolitics are slow create a dynamic from the bottom up use the leadership path that you have in communities there's one more concept I wanted to put on the table and that is the very important role of what some of the trade now call the inside mediator I'd call the honest broker you know who for me are the real heroes in Central African Republic at the moment that Archbishop and the and the most senior Imam the people who despite chaos and mayhem go out and try to say to their respective communities we've got to find a better way we've got to live together I think of the role played by the the major union confederation in Tunisia which was able to speak to all sides and be a mediating force I think of the role of the local mayor and building tolerance between communities the local chiefs the local piece architecture so I think focusing more on this role of the inside mediator the forces within the community which are committed to a peaceful outcome something better thank you very much and and Jean Marie well the first thing I want to say is that the youth has to organize itself before a conflict erupts because it's much harder to end the conflict than to prevent it but once a conflict has erupted I think the longer it lasts the more difficult actually it is to end because it fragments and I would want to answer the questions on spoilers because as a conflict lasts there's a war economy that develops and there are many people constituencies that have an interest in keeping the conflict alive it's naive to think that everybody wants peace I totally agree with that sad observation and so the real challenge for all of us is how you build a critical mass of people who are sufficiently well organized to see the benefits of moving out of a war economy because more and more as conflict lasts the distinction between political agendas criminal agendas becomes blurred the conflict becomes more fragmented and also more fluid and so making people agree on a political platform of peace is hard and so what is needed then is for the civic organization for the use but not just the use for all the civil society that can organize itself to develop that platform so as to make visible the benefits of a peaceful solution but I have seen in many situations how the critical group of those who would lose from peace sometimes have the dominant narrative and that narrative has to be fought Juan Carlos Pinson Minister of National Defense of Colombia Helen Clark is the administrator and leader of the United Nations Development Program Jean-Marie Guigeno is the CEO President CEO of the International Crisis Group our shapers from around the world Colombo, Gaza, Yuba, San Salvador and you all have created a very interesting conversation that is both troubling and hopeful we continue to focus on these long standing tragedies but at the same time we see how there are new ways of tackling them that provide hope and one I think of the main hopes like those in our screens around the world that are thinking in different ways of tackling these problems so thank you very much and please join me in thanking our panels our members