We celebrate this year’s International Youth Day under the theme “Youth Building Peace” to acknowledge young people’s contributions to conflict prevention and peacebuilding initiatives.
The world’s youth population is at an all-time high, with 1.8 billion people aged 15 to 29. Most importantly, close to 87% of them live in developing countries, and 13% are unemployed. Both poverty and unemployment are well-known breeding grounds for conflict.
As you will be able to read in the stories below, volunteerism offers valuable opportunities for youth engagement, leadership and participation to contribute to the development of peaceful and inclusive societies.
Since 2014, UNV has fielded more than 1,000 youth volunteers on assignments related to peace and development, and we are also working with a wide range of partners on joint projects aimed at unlocking the potential of youth. Moreover, UNV mobilizes more than 12,000 online volunteers every year to undertake over 20,000 online volunteering assignments worldwide, and 60% of this remarkable force consists of young people between 18 – 29 years old.
UNV is particularly well placed to channel youth contributions into peace programmes through the mobilization of youth volunteers to serve on violence prevention and peacebuilding, thus promoting social cohesion in fragile countries.
