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Asia-Pacific

Asia-Pacific

 

Throughout the Asia-Pacific region, violent conflict and extremism continue to pose serious challenges to sustainable development and security. Since 1992, 26 subnational conflicts have affected at least half the countries in the region. Many countries are increasingly characterised by human rights abuses and shrinking civic spaces, resulting in social discontent and fuelling narratives of violent extremism.

Ending protracted armed conflicts often requires long-term social and structural change at all levels. Today, the Asia-Pacific region is home to 717 million youth, or 60% of the world’s young people between the ages of 15 and 24. This unprecedented demographic offers enormous opportunities for the region to harness new ideas and innovations, new ways of building peace.

Across the region, young people are already working with conflict-affected communities to end violence and transform conflict relationships. It is crucial to work with and promote the voices and actions of young people to ensure that peacebuilding processes are inclusive and transformative, especially at grassroots levels.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on Youth, Peace & Security, to be held in Bangkok, Thailand from 16-19 May 2017, will consult young people from the region on peace and security issues, in order to provide a regional perspective for the successful implementation of UNSCR 2250(2015), to gather inputs for the Progress Study mandated by the Resolution (including the gathering of evidence on innovative peacebuilding in the region), and to create an action plan for the continuation, and promotion, of peacebuilding and social cohesion efforts in the Asia-Pacific Region. Further information on the consultation is available here.

For more information and to get involved with the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda in the Asia-Pacific Region, please join our dedicated regional group (sign-in required).