Today, world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly will celebrate the International Day of Peace, observed annually since 1981. This year’s Peace Day is centered on the theme of togetherness, and the importance of securing safety and dignity for all people – including youth. By all accounts, young people are critical to the success of peacebuilding efforts, and the dignitaries at the United Nations would do well to consider how empowered youth can make meaningful contributions to the fields of governance and development. Already, young people around the world are being called upon to protect natural resources, facilitate transboundary dialogue, and resist injustice. And as new threats to human security – including climate change and environmental degradation – emerge, harnessing the full potential of youth will prove essential to initiating a new chapter of sustainable peace.

Deprived of educational or economic prospects and barred from political participation in post-conflict settings, young people are more likely to succumb to feelings of isolation and be more vulnerable to the recruiting efforts of insurgent groups. But their well-being, health, and prosperity are all indispensable to the viability of countries transitioning from violence, as the United Nations Security Council declared in Resolution 2250. In fragile, fractured societies, youth generally constitute a substantial portion of the population, possess a strong command of social media, and tend to be more idealistic and open to change – advantages that can all be leveraged extensively to support de-escalation and reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict.

Conflict, Opportunity, and the Demography of Youth

Demographers generally agree that a country’s youthfulness and its internal stability are correlated: the greater the proportion of young people in a country’s population, the higher the chance of civil conflict. Today, more than 600 million young people live in countries afflicted by violence and state weakness, and men between the ages of 15 and 29 comprise nearly half of the world’s victims of armed violence. Young people in developing countries whose governments struggle to provide large numbers of youth with adequate schooling and employment can find themselves turning away from the political establishment, supporting authoritarian regimes or extremist ideologies. As research by Wilson Center Global Fellow Richard Cincotta has shown, youthful age structures render a stable, liberal democracy much harder to achieve and sustain.

However, it is by no means the case that burgeoning populations of young people are necessarily synonymous with violence and vulnerable institutions. In fact, this view – that youth are helpless victims or irredeemable troublemakers, rather than legitimate stakeholders in post-conflict societies – can be counterproductive, restricting their long-term opportunities for social and political advancement. Indeed, under the correct conditions, youth can serve as grassroots advocates of conflict prevention and can help repair relations between communities at odds. But recasting young people as agents of constructive change will require a dramatic overhaul of how governments, international organizations, and older generations engage with them, negotiate their needs, and consider their promise.

A More Youthful Approach: Environmental Peacebuilding

As the world wrestles simultaneously with climate change and a cascade of conflicts incited, in part, by climate-related stresses – such as water scarcity and drought – some peacebuilders have more concertedly integrated ecological concerns into their efforts. Young people in particular have demonstrated a remarkable knack for environmental peacebuilding – the process by which hostile groups suspend their mutual antipathy and develop fair mechanisms for preserving and allocating shared resources. According to a study commissioned by the German government, peace rooted in the principles of inclusive development and environmentalism can generate a positive ripple effect, leading to strengthened civil societies, enhanced security, and broader political cooperation in other arenas.

In advancing the cause of sustainability and safeguarding biodiversity, youth are increasingly understood to be crucial participants. They can serve as enthusiastic allies, eager to become “peer educators” and promote discussions about family planning and environmental protection in their communities. They are also highly receptive to the concept of peace parks – regions that span national boundaries and aim to preserve wildlife, generate revenue from eco-tourism, and induce cooperation between adversaries. Through carefully tailored programming, young people can develop cross-border relationships, acquire leadership skills, and learn to deconstruct the entrenched prejudices that enable conflicts to persist. A particularly ambitious peace park project is unfolding at the border between Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo – countries whose governments were created or declared independence within the past three decades – though it remains to be seen how effective peace parks are in the long-term.

Young people have also successfully championed reforms of extractive industries, like mining and gas, that often engage in poor labor and environmental practices at the expense of local ecosystems and communities. This cycle of exploitation eventually results in broken governance, ravaged landscapes, crippling rates of unemployment and inequality, and even violent conflict. Yemen and Nigeria, for example – both of which once boasted healthy agricultural sectors – aggressively shifted to oil exports in the 20th century, only to see their fortunes reverse, as they hemorrhage jobs and struggle to contain domestic insurgencies. On the whole, youth, sometimes coerced into joining extractive enterprises as armed fighters or underage workers, bear a significant part of the burden of unchecked resource extraction.

But some young people have taken a resolute stand. Youth in Cameroon have been on the frontlines in the campaign to better regulate export-oriented industries, leading and participating in workshops, advocacy, and inspections of extractive facilities. And in Tanzania – where large-scale firms have displaced local goldminers and left 400,000 people unemployed – young people have worked to overcome hostilities between extractive firms and the communities marginalized by their operations. In partnership with Search for Common Ground, thousands of young Tanzanians received training in conflict resolution and contributed more actively to community decision-making. In 2011, a mining company in North Mara, Tanzania, acquiesced to their demands, and agreed to invest more heavily in infrastructure and public services, even initiating a preferential hiring program for young women.

Overcoming Inequality: Young Women as Peace Leaders

While the efforts to integrate young people more closely into peacebuilding and politics are certainly gaining momentum, the barriers to youth empowerment remain multifarious. By 2050, Africa will have a population of 830 million young people; each year, up to 12 million people join the labor force, competing for the 3.7 million jobs created annually on the continent. This insufficiency has very real consequences for international security, since youth participation in rebellions and gangs is driven by unemployment.

Furthermore, gender inequality and the exclusion of young women from peacebuilding initiatives continue to hamper the efficacy of peace agreements. A 2016 analysis by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies found that the robust inclusion of women – as mediators, signatories, witnesses, or negotiators – in post-conflict peace processes dramatically increases the likelihood that a peace agreement is reached and will last at least two years. With Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, the United Nations affirmed that women are instrumental in fostering international peace, but their involvement in peacebuilding is still limited. Even broader conversations about security in academic and policy circles – which focus mainly on young men, who are prone to radicalization and armed insurrection, and older women with influence and networks of support – ignore young women and girls entirely.

There are some basic steps that can be taken to bolster young women’s inclusion in peacebuilding. Studies show that efforts to promote gender equity are more effective when women are able to participate actively in civil society and in the public sphere. Moreover, expanding conversations about gender-based and sexual violence to include related issues of economic justice and governance can help transform the prevailing conception of women as one-dimensional casualties of conflict into agents of change. And efforts to promote women’s leadership must address gaps in women’s healthcare – including maternal and reproductive health services – that can limit their ability to participate in peace efforts.

Of course, these impediments to gender parity are rooted in long-term trends and traditions, and overcoming them will not be easy. But the world must act urgently to resolve them if the tremendous potential of youth – as future peacebuilders, conservationists, leaders in sustainable development, stewards of nascent democracies, even robot designers – is to be fully realized. The fate of our environment – and the prospect of global peace – depend on it.