This International Youth Day presents an opportunity to take stock of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda – where it stands today and where it must go next. As we approach the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 2250 in December, a landmark moment in acknowledging the constructive role of young people in building and sustaining peace, we must examine whether the promise of the agenda has translated into meaningful change for young people on the ground. At a time when the world is teetering on the cusp of overlapping crises – from protracted conflict to climate-related insecurity – and as multilateralism is under strain, the YPS agenda offers both a framework and a call to action to safeguard civic space, invest in youth leadership, and strengthen the foundations of peace. Yet, despite leading peacebuilding efforts worldwide, young people’s leadership continues to be under-recognised and under-resourced. Interpeace is preparing a comprehensive policy analysis to assess a decade of progress and persistent gaps; here, we share a preview of emerging insights ahead of the full release later this year.
Drawing on early analysis from our forthcoming policy brief, we identify four emerging insights that will be central to advancing the YPS agenda into its second decade. These reflect both the progress made and the persistent challenges that threaten the agenda’s transformative potential.
In the decade since its adoption, the YPS agenda has achieved important normative milestones: three UN Security Council resolutions have embedded youth participation in peace and security frameworks, biennial reporting has secured a permanent place for YPS on the Council’s agenda, and the UN Youth Office now provides a focal point for stronger system-wide coordination. Signs of uptake are also visible at regional and national levels, from the African Union’s Continental Framework to a growing number of National Action Plans. This normative recognition matters: it sets clear expectations for governments, multilateral institutions, and civil society to include young people as legitimate actors in political and peace processes and provides a framework against which progress can be measured.
Yet these advances have not been matched by consistent implementation. Dedicated funding remains scarce, integration into peace and security processes is fragmented, and political commitments vary widely, leaving much of the agenda’s potential unrealised. For young people in conflict-affected settings, this disconnect means that international recognition has yet to deliver the resources, protection, and influence needed to shape peace processes in their own communities. Without stronger accountability, predictable financing, and sustained political will, the agenda risks remaining a rhetorical commitment more visible in policy documents than in lived realities.
While elements of the YPS agenda have been embraced across regions, uptake remains uneven. Africa continues to lead the way with the African Union’s Continental Framework on YPS, and its 10-Year Implementation Plan, which integrates YPS into continental priorities such as governance reform, peace education, and electoral violence prevention. In the Middle East and North Africa, the League of Arab States’ regional strategy marks a normative breakthrough, yet no state in the region has adopted a National Action Plan, and resource allocation remains limited. The European Union has incorporated YPS into its external action and supported youth engagement globally, but it lacks a dedicated internal framework. Elsewhere, particularly in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific, youth peacebuilding thrives at the grassroots level but has little formal policy anchoring at regional or national levels.
This uneven uptake is driven by disparities in political will, institutional capacity, and the level of donor engagement — shaped by security dynamics, competing policy priorities, and historical patterns of international support. If left unaddressed, these disparities risk hardwiring geographic inequalities into the YPS agenda, undermining its universality and limiting its transformative potential. Closing this gap will require more than generic commitments. Targeted donor compacts, peer-learning mechanisms between regions, and accountability frameworks for regional institutions could help translate global recognition into local impact. Above all, investment must prioritise youth-led, context-specific initiatives backed by long-term political and financial support.
If normative commitments are the foundation of the YPS agenda, and regional frameworks the scaffolding, civil society is the engine that drives it forward. Over the past decade, youth-led and youth-focused organisations have been critical in translating policy commitments into tangible changes: from mediating local disputes, facilitating community dialogues, monitoring peace agreements and advocating for inclusive governance. Across regions, they are putting the YPS agenda into action in diverse and innovative ways. In the Pacific, young climate activists such as the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change have reframed environmental degradation as an existential peace and security issue, successfully lobbying the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on states’ climate obligations. In the Middle East and North Africa, the MENA Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security unites youth-led organisations from across the region to coordinate advocacy, amplify grassroots perspectives, and secure space for young people in regional peace and security processes. In Côte d’Ivoire, Interpeace and Indigo Côte d’Ivoire trained and supported 40 young leaders to design and implement community-led peace initiatives, later co-authoring a White Paper with them to capture lessons learned and practical guidance for scaling youth participation in peace and security. In Burundi, the youth-led Youth Empowerment and Leadership Initiative (YELI) played a key role in shaping national policy, serving on the Steering Committee that developed the country’s first National Action Plan on YPS, while continuing to train young leaders in conflict prevention, mediation, and civic engagement.
These examples show how civil society organisations breathe life into the YPS agenda. Yet their central role remains under-recognised and under-resourced. Many youth-led organisations operate in a shrinking civic space, face legal and bureaucratic hurdles to registration and funding, and navigate personal safety risks in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Volunteerism remains the norm, raising questions about sustainability and fairness, especially when youth are expected to shoulder the agenda’s implementation without the resources to do so. Without deliberate investment, enabling policies, and protection measures, the YPS agenda risks relying on voluntary, under-funded activism, undermining its sustainability and reach.
Strengthening civil society’s role is essential — but so too is addressing the blind spots that have kept key issues, actors, and contexts at the margins of the YPS agenda.
Despite a decade of important progress, the YPS agenda continues to overlook key areas essential to impact and inclusion.
L' protection pillar, in particular, remains deeply under-resourced. As the If I Disappear report makes starkly clear, youth peacebuilders often face harassment, criminalisation, and even physical harm in shrinking civic spaces, often without access to legal recourse or institutional safeguards.
Implementation gaps persist notably in peace processes. A University of Glasgow–based analysis shows that a mere 12% of peace agreements concluded between 1990 and 2022 explicitly reference youth — a striking omission given that UN Security Council Resolution 2250 (2015) calls for the inclusion of young people in the negotiation and implementation of peace agreements, and Resolution 2419 (2018) further underscores their role in prevention and sustaining peace.
L' disengagement and reintegration pillar has also been largely neglected, partly due to fears of reinforcing securitised narratives and stigma around youth associated with violence. Yet, avoiding this area leaves crucial pathways for rehabilitation, reconciliation, and social reintegration underdeveloped — particularly in contexts where young people are seeking to transition out of armed groups or cycles of political violence. Addressing this gap requires approaches that reject simplistic stereotypes and acknowledge the complex realities young people navigate. Interpeace’s youth-centred strategy includes working with young people who have experienced or perpetrated violence, recognising that they can be both contributors to peace and participants in conflict. Rather than romanticising youth as inherently peaceful or portraying them solely as threats, this approach combines socio-emotional skills-building, intergenerational dialogue, and tailored conflict prevention programming to foster resilience and reintegration.
Meanwhile, other thematic priorities remain peripheral in both national and UN frameworks. Climate–YPS linkages, despite being an emerging route for youth inclusion in peace and security efforts, are rarely integrated into formal strategies. Similarly, youth mental health continues to be overlooked—even though many young peacebuilders emphasise that well‑being, hope, and dignity are central to their definition of peace.
These thematic omissions are compounded by structural inequalities. Rural youth, Indigenous communities, young people with disabilities, and those working in informal sectors face entrenched barriers to participation, further weakening both the reach, legitimacy and effectiveness of the YPS agenda.
Far from peripheral, these blind spots are central to determining whether the YPS agenda can move from rhetorical commitment to lived change.
A decade on from Resolution 2250, the YPS agenda stands at a decisive crossroads. Normative gains and growing regional frameworks have laid the groundwork for youth inclusion, yet uneven implementation, chronic underfunding, and persistent blind spots continue to limit its transformative potential. Civil society remains the agenda’s driving force, but without sustained investment, stronger protection, and the integration of overlooked priorities—such as climate–peace linkages, mental health, and reintegration—progress will remain fragile.
The upcoming Decade Review is a critical moment to confront these challenges head-on. Closing the gap between policy and practice will require predictable financing for youth-led initiatives, stronger accountability mechanisms, and the dismantling of structural barriers that exclude marginalised youth. Only by treating these gaps as central—not peripheral—can the YPS agenda move from rhetorical commitment to lived change, securing its role as a cornerstone of sustainable peace in the decade ahead.
For Interpeace and its partners, meeting this moment means deepening our youth-centred approach to peacebuilding: one that rejects simplistic narratives, recognises the complexity of young people’s roles in peace and conflict, and places their lived realities at the heart of peace processes. This approach not only informs the design of context-specific initiatives, from DDR to MHPSS, but also reframes prevention, dialogue, and mediation through a generational lens. By embedding peace-responsive strategies across all thematic pillars, we aim to both strengthen current peacebuilding practice and challenge long-held assumptions about what inclusive and meaningful participation truly looks like.
The full policy analysis, to be released in December, will offer a detailed examination of the YPS agenda’s evolution, highlight lessons learned, and present actionable recommendations for the Second Progress Study. This International Youth Day is a reminder that the next decade of YPS will be defined by a simple choice: whether the world will match young people’s leadership with the resources, protection, and influence they need to build lasting peace.
