The Peace Centre’s trained Youth Peace ambassadors in commemoration of 2021’s World Peace Day hosted a Tweet-chat under the theme “Shaping Peace Together” with a belief that shaping peace is everyone’s responsibility. The Tweet chat explored opportunities for youth participation in peacebuilding in their communities and aimed to transform youth perspectives towards shaping peace as we all have a role to play towards shaping and ensuring peace and security.
This comprised of four panellists including; Nuwagaba Muhsin, Youth Representative at the African Union, Omara Daniel, Peace Advocate, Nassuna Carol, Zonal Chairperson Ggaba Peace Ambassador and Aida Gift Kisambira, Law student IUIU-Kampala campus and was moderated by Latifah Namutebi, Research Assistant, Women’s International Peace Centre. The panellists led a 1 hour 30 minutes, interactive conversation followed by an interactive question and answer session.
The conversation included questioning and sharing what peace meant in the context of their community, explaining that peace was positive interactions, personal liberty, free expression, mutual respect and social, economic and political security. They further discussed peacebuilding in a pandemic context by sharing how COVID-19 influenced youth participation in peacebuilding processes in Uganda in ways negative ways; like the high poverty rates and looking at a report by the United Nations in 2019, hunger rates increased to 60% in conflict countries like Uganda and so this caused peacebuilders to also give up on ensuring peacekeeping and the positive ways like increased small acts of bravery and Community people connecting have nurtured in youth the zeal and desire to defend peace in our country.
The tweet chat also addressed the challenges youth peace advocates face in their community in the pursuit of peace, key interventions needed to fully address these challenges and actions they would recommend enhancing youth access, participation and influence in policy/decision-making processes in Uganda.
