Piece by Peace: A Collaborative UNESCO Youth Movement to a Brighter Future

Throughout the world, different UNESCO Member States have forms of meaningful youth engagement. The Toolkit on Youth Engagement in UNESCO National Commissions (2021) offers descriptions of existing youth participation formats. This toolkit forms a first step towards the creation of a flexible and sustainable directory and platform that enables youth participation formats to contact each other and to work together.

An example of a meaningful youth participation format is that of the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a national UNESCO Youth Commission that consists of eleven members aged between 16 and 24. They independently organise events and projects based on UNESCO values. They give guest lectures at UNESCO schools. And most importantly, they represent young people’s voices through the attendance of the Chair and Vice-Chair at National Commission meetings. The successes of the UNESCO Netherlands Youth Commission are visible through the increase in partnerships and collaborations on projects and advice sessions that it engages in. This practical example - alongside the examples found in Appendix 1 - shows how youth engagement is not a “risk” to be managed, but a resource to be harnessed.

We believe that we can fortify the sustainability of the peaceful world that we as youth would all want to live in through an approach that focuses on expanding possibilities for young people to voice their opinions at a National Commission level. As acknowledged in UNESCO’s Network of National Commissions: Delivering for the People (2026), National Commissions are the connective factors between international UNESCO policy and national contexts. They embody the idea that intergovernmental decision-making is strengthened through the engagement of people all across the world. To increase UNESCO’s visibility and perceived value among young people, it is crucial to have them see that young people - people like them - are involved in the work UNESCO does. Other Member States can draw inspiration from the examples offered by Member States that have established a youth participation format suiting their national context. We propose that we can learn from each other best on the basis of friendship - a belief that has brought and kept us together throughout the youth-led, collaborative process of realising this statement.