As an international community, we continue to look to states and regional and international organisations to drive efforts to end conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere. While these actors and their leaders have an important role to play, enduring intergenerational peace must be built from within conflict-affected communities.
In recent years, ideas around peace leadership are beginning to change. In particular, developments in global policy, scholarship, and programming have started to recognise that a robust peace must include all members of a community and be sustainable across generations.
To get there, much more work is needed to recognise and support the peacebuilding work of young people. In our research, we have focused on the important roles young women play as peacebuilders around the world, and particularly across Asia and the Pacific, home to 60 percent of the world’s young people.
Why Does Intergenerational Peace Leadership (IPL) Matter?
In our recent article involving research with young women peacebuilders, we theorise and advocate for what we call Intergenerational Peace Leadership (IPL). To explore the concept of IPL, and identify prospects and challenges, we draw on 3 case studies from the Asia/Pacific region: Myanmar, Papua New Guinea (Bougainville), and Nepal. We selected these as they all feature intergenerational conflict experiences and efforts at community-based peacebuilding. We also note that in these contexts, as with other conflicts, young women often face gender and age-based exclusions in their participation and especially leadership roles in the peace process. As one regional stakeholder explained:
“Many of the people in global policymaking are older and think they know the needs of young people. But to actually hear it from the young people themselves is really important, and particularly young women who we know often don’t have a voice in their own countries and in their own families, and to make sure that their voices are actually heard.”
Likewise, other young women articulated these challenges in their experiences:
“[W]hen it comes to people owning things, it’s very hard to let go. We had a lot of challenges with that, that people [feel like they] own things: ‘I’ve started this and I’m not giving it away. This is my child. I’m not giving it away’…. We should have this willingness that, okay, we move on and we allow others to come and continue the work (YWPNG8).”
“There is no gender equality, and gender discrimination stops women leading in the society … Women leaders receive no respect [from] men, and also they are pressured by experienced and elder ones. Thus, the young women leaders are not taken seriously in their community (MYW4).”
Young Women Leading for Peace
Our research analysed the lived experiences of 30 young women in the three countries mentioned above (Myanmar, Nepal, and Papua New Guinea/Bougainville). Through focus groups and key informant interviews conducted by peer researchers, young women explored their experiences, attitudes, and understandings of intergenerational peace leadership. Interviews were also conducted with older women and other stakeholders engaged in peacebuilding in the countries considered.
Overall, we find that young women contribute to peacebuilding in a range of important ways, including through more informal, local settings and efforts. That said, their work often goes ignored in policies and programming aimed at building peace. Indeed, many studies, including our own, have noted that age-based hierarchies and associated power dynamics often lead to young women being ignored, marginalised, or silenced, even within peacebuilding efforts that are described as intergenerational. In contrast, the insights we’ve gathered from these young women peace leaders has led us to propose a shift in thinking around how we approach efforts to create inclusive, sustainable peace through intentional intergenerational efforts. After all, as Podder rightly notes “even in settings where formal peace agreements have been signed, the fundamental changes needed to solidify peace will take generations” (2022: 11).
What Is Intergenerational Peace Leadership (IPL)?
Drawing on what we learned from these young women, we propose an IPL approach that recognises and prioritises inclusive, sustainable peacebuilding contributions, both local and informal, that engage all generations in mutually respectful ways. In this way, we suggest a vision of peace that is shared and collectively owned between and across generations, and which recognises the crucial contributions youth can make. As one young woman put it:
“So when . . . I move on and when I’m doing something else these other young people . . . tak[e] my place and when he moves on or she moves on [they] will … mentor upcoming young generations of young people so we continue that intergenerational leadership . . .. (YWPNG1).”
Creating such conditions will require critically engaging with existing hierarchies, while being sensitive to the complex cultural norms and values in the conflict-affected settings where young women peacebuilders live and work.
What’s Next?
Enacting intergenerational peace leadership will necessarily include a diverse suite of efforts in both informal and formal settings. This could include, for example:
- Expanding and diversifying membership of informal and formal leadership roles to include a wider range of ages
- Offering young women reserved spaces for active contributions to peacebuilding events locally, nationally, regionally, and globally
- Funding and supporting programs specifically designed for and with young women leaders, including peer leadership approaches that incorporate knowledge and skill sharing for peace
- Creating and maintaining accessible safe spaces across a range of settings, both formal and informal (e.g. schools, policy forums, community groups, and workplaces), where young women can communicate about the issues that directly and uniquely impact them
While these suggestions are far from exhaustive, and none of these efforts would constitute a panacea for achieving a gender- and age-inclusive approach to peacebuilding, we offer these in the spirit of prompting further discussions and action. What will you do next to support the creation of inclusive, sustainable peace? And how will you ensure young women are heard, supported, and valued for their peace leadership? The answers may resonate for generations to come.
Lesley Pruitt
Dr Lesley Pruitt is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences & Research Affiliate of the Initiative for Peacebuilding at the University of Melbourne. She is also the author of Youth Peacebuilding: Music, Gender, and Change (State University of New York Press, 2013) and The Women in Blue Helmets: Gender, Policing, and the UN’s First All-Female Peacekeeping Unit (University of California Press, 2016). She is also co-author of Dancing through the Dissonance: Creative Movement and Peacebuilding (Manchester University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Young Women & Leadership (Routledge, 2020).
Katrina Lee Koo
Professor Katrina Lee Koo is the Head of School, School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. She researchers in the field of inclusive peace and security, with a focus upon youth, women and children in peace and conflict. Her publications include: Gender Politics: Navigating Political Leadership in Australia (co-edited with Zareh Ghazarian, 2021, New South Publishing), Young Women and Leadership, (co-edited with Lesley Pruitt, New York: Routledge, 2020), Children and Global Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2015 with Kim Huynh and Bina D’Costa) and Ethics and Global Security (Routledge, 2014 with Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald).
