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Youth, Peace and Security (YPS)

Why YPS Matters

More than 600 million young people live in fragile and conflict-affected settings, facing violence, displacement, exclusion, and disrupted livelihoods. Despite their lived reality, stereotypes continue to cast young men as threats and young women as passive victims. However, young people consistently demonstrate the capacity to prevent violence, mediate conflict, and create pathways for change.

For Interpeace, meaningful engagement goes beyond having young people in the room and around the table. We seek to create conditions for young people to shape the decisions, relationships, and systems that affect their lives. Our goal is to support youth-centred approaches that challenge and improve the way peace is built.

Our work leans on the United Nations’ Youth and Peace and Security (YPS) agenda, articulated in the UNSCRs 2250 (2015), subsequent resolutions 2419 and 2535, as well as the Progress Study: The Missing Peace (2017).
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young people living in fragile and conflict-affected settings worldwide
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young people trained by Interpeace in conflict prevention, management and transformation, 2020–2025
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people engaged in intergenerational dialogue across Interpeace's peacebuilding work in 2020-2025

Young people should shape the processes that shape their lives.

Meaningful youth engagement is not simply about whether young people are in the room. It is about whether they can shape what happens in it. Across our work, Interpeace seeks to create the conditions for young people to move beyond participation and exercise greater agency and influence.
Stage 01

Invited

Young people are invited into the process.

Stage 02

Heard

Young people's perspectives are listened to and taken seriously.

Stage 03

Participate

Young people contribute to discussions and decisions.

Stage 04

Shape

Young people shape priorities, solutions and how processes work.

Stage 05

Influence

Young people influence decisions, policies and systems.

Presence Influence

Five Dimensions. One Agenda

Our YPS agenda is shaped through continuous exchange across levels and geographies. We seek to create conditions for young people to exercise greater agency and influence in national, regional, and global policy processes. At the same time, we strengthen frameworks, commitments, and resources that create openings for local, youth-led action.

We work with young people as peacebuilders, leaders, analysts, mediators, and organisers across five connected dimensions of peacebuilding.
01

Youth-led peacebuilding

Young people identify their own peacebuilding priorities and shape or lead responses in their communities.

02

Intergenerational peacebuilding

Young people and older generations engage across differences, address conflict legacies and inherited narratives, and build stronger relationships for peace.

03

Institutions, policies and systems

Young people help shape the policies, institutions and systems that affect their lives, rather than simply being asked to participate in them.

04

Political and economic empowerment

Young people strengthen their political voice, economic agency and collective power to shape more peaceful societies.

05

Psychosocially informed peacebuilding

The personal is part of the political. A mental health and psychosocial lens recognises wellbeing and resilience as essential for peace.

Initiatives

A Continuous Exchange, Not a One-Way Pipeline

The YPS agenda is shaped through continuous exchange across levels. Young people's experiences and ideas influence national, regional and global policy, while new frameworks, commitments and resources create openings for action locally. Learning also travels across countries and regions, connecting experiences that might otherwise remain separate.
Across Levels
The YPS agenda is shaped through continuous exchange between local, national, regional and global levels. Ideas, experience and influence move in both directions — from practice to policy and back again.
Across Context
The YPS agenda is shaped through continuous exchange between local, national, regional and global levels. Ideas, experience and influence move in both directions — from practice to policy and back again.
If the YPS agenda is about youth, its implementation must also be about youth. We cannot afford to exclude youth from the process when we try to address youth exclusion itself.

Mridul Upadhyay

Assessing Youth Participation in the Implementation of the YPS Agenda — Outside the Box

I am a huge fan of this programme. Every time I talk about it, people ask me, ‘When is the second cohort?’ It shows how much participants value the programme. I love it because we gain solid knowledge and practical mediation skills that we can apply in real situations.

Dr Aslan Temirkhanov

Participant, Youth Peace Mediators’ Mentoring Programme (YPMMP)

The conversations, the trust that was built, and the openness to share different perspectives created a space that goes far beyond a typical workshop. It felt like a collective moment of clarity and purpose — and made evident the responsibility we carry moving forward.

Santiago Gutiérrez Mejía

Fundación LATIR, Colombia · Participant, From Policy to Practice

Resources

News

Get in touch

A small yet agile team helps drive and coordinate this work. Graeme Simpson is Interpeace’s Principal Representative (NY) & Senior Peacebuilding Advisor, and the former Lead Author of The Missing Peace.

Contact: simpson@interpeace.org.