When we talk about young people, we usually speak in the future tense. Young people will be tomorrow’s leaders, will inherit our institutions, and one day will assume responsibility for peace in the region. The problem lies between the lines. By continually relegating young people to the future, we diminish the role they should have today.
Peace is not simply a matter of agreements between political leaders. Peace is built every day: in schools, organisations, the media, cultural spaces, and local communities. It is built when prejudices are challenged. It is built when people from different communities work together and when citizens find peaceful ways to oppose injustice. In all these spaces, young people are already agents of peace.
Yet public discourse continues to portray them mainly as a group that needs to be educated. In tense contexts, they are described either as vulnerable victims or as being at risk of radicalisation. This is precisely the way of thinking that the United Nations Youth, Peace and Security agenda, known as the YPS agenda, seeks to change.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250, adopted in 2015, was the first international document to explicitly recognise the positive contribution of young people to conflict prevention and resolution. Its central message is simple: young people should not be treated only as beneficiaries of peace policies, but as their co-creators.
This shift is necessary because the main obstacle does not appear to be a lack of interest among young people, but a lack of channels through which their engagement can be translated into influence. A 2024 Eurobarometer survey showed that only 48% of young people had taken action for social change during the previous year. This figure does not prove that the other half is apathetic. Among young people who had not participated in the activities of organisations, the most common obstacle was a lack of time. Others said that no one had invited them, that they did not know how to get involved, or that they lacked sufficient knowledge and tools.
The question, therefore, is not only why young people do not participate. It should also be: what kind of participation do institutions offer them?
Roger Hart described participation through a ladder that begins with manipulation, decoration, and tokenism, and rises towards informed consultation, shared decision-making, and initiatives led by young people themselves. According to this approach, placing two young people on a panel, photographing them at a conference, or inviting them to read a statement prepared in advance does not necessarily constitute participation. Participation becomes meaningful only when young people have information, resources, responsibility, and influence over the final decision.
The gap between the size of the youth population and its political power makes this distinction even clearer. Around half of the world’s population is under the age of 30, yet only 2.8% of parliamentarians worldwide belong to this age group. More than one-third of parliamentary chambers have no member aged 30 or younger. This does not mean that every decision should be left solely to young people. It means that decisions directly affecting their lives and futures cannot be considered fully representative when they are absent from the table.
In the Western Balkans, young people live with the consequences of conflicts they did not start: ethnic divisions, mistrust between communities, competing narratives about the past, and institutions that often reproduce these divisions. Yet precisely because they did not create these conflicts, they can develop new forms of communication and cooperation that are not constrained by old political patterns.
Concrete examples already exist. The Creative Agents of Peace and Social Inclusion programme brings together young artists and activists from Kosovo and Serbia, supporting them to build trust, develop shared narratives, and create their own artistic and civic initiatives. Rather than treating participants merely as the audience for a training programme, it aims to enable them to develop actions within their own communities.
Initiatives of this kind show that young people do not simply need more training. They need access to decision-making, direct funding, mentoring, and spaces where they can take risks, experiment, and assume responsibility. Public institutions and donors should measure participation not by the number of young people in the room, but by asking more difficult questions: Did young people influence the agenda? Did they control a share of the resources? Did any decision change as a result of their contribution? Did the initiative continue after the funding ended?
The YPS agenda must not remain confined to the language of documents and conferences. It must take the form of real seats at decision-making tables, budgets for youth-led organisations, and partnerships in which power is shared rather than consultation merely offered.
Young people are not only the generation that will inherit peace. They are already building it. The question is not when they will be ready to participate. The question is when institutions will be ready to share power with them.
Author: Glauk Haxhiaj
This op-ed is part of the initiative “Creative Agents of Peace: Empowering Youth for Social Change through Art and the YPS Agenda – Phase II,” implemented by CASA, KUUM, IZI, Cultural Club Gračanica and CDE Valley/Dolina, with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office through ifa/zivik.
