Thus, this study is an outcome of a youth-led participatory action research on assessing leadership, participation and inclusion of young people in the implementation of the Youth, Peace & Security (YPS) agenda at the national level.

Important progress has been made since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2250 in 2015. The UNSCR 2250 presents an all-encompassing framework for YPS around five pillars: participation, protection, prevention, disengagement and reintegration, and partnerships. Building upon it, UNSCR 2419 (in year 2018) calls for an increasing role of youth in negotiating and implementing peace agreements and UNSCR 2535 (in year 2020) emphasized on protecting civic and political spaces for youth, diversifying youth participation and implementation through dedicated roadmaps with sufficient resources & through a participatory process. The Missing Peace report, published in September 2018, is an independent progress study on youth and peace and security. The UN Secretary General published its first global report on YPS in 2020. More than 70 agencies, including UN agencies, INGOs, CSOs and youth-led organisations, are leading and shaping global policy and practices around YPS through the Global Coalition on Youth, Peace & Security. Overall, YPS seems to represent a significant and well-established thematic agenda for the UN Security Council, so it’s important to understand its relevance as an area of participation-in-practice beyond the Council Chambers or Headquarters.

The Independent Progress Study on YPS: The Missing Peace, played a key role in achieving progress on engaging young people in global policy making processes on peace and security issues. Participatory and inclusive approach of the Missing Peace Study amplified the voices of young people, who are usually not listened to in global peace and security processes. Differently, the first report of the Secretary-General (SG) on youth, peace and security 2020 provided much less attention to youth voices, and very few examples were included, only to showcase that the implementation of the global YPS Agenda were somehow led or owned by young people.

While the global Youth, Peace & Security (YPS) agenda moves from policy to implementation, it is crucial to ensure young people or youth-led organizations are meaningfully part of coalition building efforts, policy formulation and also monitoring implementation efforts. This was fortunately recognized in the most recent YPS resolution adopted by the UNSC in July 2020. UNSCR 2535 encouraged the Member States, and regional and subregional organizations to develop participatory processes, in particular with young people and youth organizations and to pursue the implementation of the YPS agenda. Yet, international peace and security institutions spent very little or no efforts to analyse and monitor youth participation, leadership and ownership in operationalizing the YPS agenda.

Currently, at the national level, there are coalition building efforts, roadmaps or similar mechanisms put in place to implement the YPS agenda in more than a dozen of countries. There is a varying degree of youth participation in these efforts. In some of them young people lead and shape these efforts collaboratively with their governments. In others, young people are excluded from the processes or at best consulted. While in some others, youth are waiting for other stakeholders to understand the need of collaborative implementation efforts and thus join the coalitions. This study compares and contrasts youth participation in coalition building and implementation efforts.

This ongoing study since December 2018 has been conducted through key informant interviews with young people who are engaged or interested in engaging in national level implementation efforts in these countries. These interviews shed light on different ways in which young people influence implementation efforts. In this study, we examine the three dimensions of the YPS agenda implementation:

the implementation of the agenda at the national level, primarily through the development of national networks, coalitions, roadmaps and adoption of National Action Plans (NAPs);
the stakeholder engagement in leading and supporting these implementation efforts; and
the avenues for and level of youth participation in these implementation efforts.

This website visually* presents the analysed content, collected and translated so far. A report on the key findings from our analysis is work in progress.

Methodology

We began by collecting all publicly available content on YPS implementation since December 2015. From December 2018, to have a better sense of the quality of the process, one-on-one semi-formal discussions with young peacebuilders were conducted by young peacebuilders for each of these countries, using listening and learning methodology. Some data points (country, region and year of small milestones) were easily drawn from various reports and concept notes. However, assessing types of implementation and quality and level of participation occasionally required subjective assessment. There is a great deal of variation amongst these processes, so there is an element of interpretive analysis necessary when making these conclusions. It should also be noted that these findings are based solely on our interpretation of the information shared by young people who are somehow engaged in these processes at the national level. We do not evaluate the accuracy of the young people’s experience beyond critical thinking questions during the dialogue. Further research would be required to engage with the question of accuracy in each country context on a case-by-case basis.

Types of national YPS Implementation:

YPS Coalition
National YPS Roadmaps
YPS National Plan (NAP)
2250 Launch

Levels of youth participation in national implementation efforts

Direct participation in leadership: Youth led, shared decision making with Govt/UN/INGO/CSO.
Direct participation by being present in the room: Govt/UN/INGO/CSO led, shared decision making with youth, with sufficient youth-agency building.
Direct participation but window-dressing: Govt/UN/INGO/CSO led, shared decision making with youth, but insufficient youth-agency building.
Informative: Govt/UN/INGO/CSO led, youth are informed.
Consultation: Youth consulted ad-hoc.
Exclusion partial: Youth and INGO/CSOs led but not supported by Government.
Exclusion severe: Youth led but not supported by Government or CSOs.
Exclusion complete: Youth excluded (neither informed nor supported).
Competing stands: two different initiatives, each led by youth and Govt/UN/INGO/CSO.
Doesn't exist yet.

How to reference this resource

The website and content analysis provided can be referenced as: Upadhyay, Mridul (2020) YPS Monitor: Content Analysis and Data Visualisation, Online, at https://www.ypsmonitor.com/