Young Woman Sitting in a Computer Classroom and Using a Laptop, photo by Peter Kambey via Pexels.
Indonesia struggles with religious intolerance. In some parts of the country, conflict between different religious groups has resulted in conflict between extremist groups and the government, as well as persecution of minority groups.
An initiative by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aims to use social media to combat hate speech and build peace in Indonesia. In July 2025, UNESCO’s Social Media 4 Peace project officially launched its second phase in Indonesia. The project aims to build resilience in societies against potentially harmful online content, particularly hate speech. It aims to strengthen freedom of expression and promote peace through social media and digital technology.
In its work in Indonesia, Social Media 4 Peace will help to build teachers’ capacity with Media and Information Literacy (MIL) toolkits, which outline core competencies of seven elements of media and information literacy for students in grades 7-12. The toolkits will provide subject-specific guidance.
Septiaji Eko Nugroho, Head of Mafindo, the organization that will develop this toolkit, says that many teachers say the toolkit is exactly what they need to teach critical thinking and online responsibility. Nogruho said that in the long term, the toolkit is meant to be, “a sustainable, scalable resource that empowers schools, strengthens digital resilience, and fosters a generation of critical thinkers equipped to navigate today’s complex media landscape.”
There will also be an initiative focusing on MIL empowerment in religious schools specifically, led by the media research and training organization Solopos Institute. Since hate speech often promotes religious intolerance, the initiative views religious schools as playing a critical role in forming values. Syifaul Arifin, Head of Solopos Institute, says the initiative especially hopes to raise awareness of MIL within Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Social Media 4 Peace, which is funded by the European Union, was first launched in 2021 in Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, and Kenya. The project’s work involves mapping legal tools developed by national authorities to tackle potentially harmful content. It also monitors the context of the dissemination of hateful content, as well as its root causes, intent, and effects on people and their behavior.
The project then works to establish national multi-stakeholder platforms, and drafts preliminary country-based assessments based on societal and political divides. It then drafts recommendations to make measures and tools addressing potentially harmful content more effective.
In December 2024, Peace News Network (PNN) published another article about promoting peace in Indonesian schools. In Poso regency, peace and interfaith programs have inspired many religious teachers to present an inclusive multicultural learning model in many schools. They are implementing religious learning, extracurricular activities, socio-religious activities, and humanitarian solidarity programs responsive to peace practices in Poso’s post-conflict environment. Most schools in the regency have conducted religious education that is oriented towards strengthening religious, national, and cultural values responsive to peacebuilding in schools.
Students are taught about the teachings of their religions, which include non-violence and respect for the teachings of other religions on the principle of human equality as God’s creatures and citizens of the nation. Religious teachers educate inclusive, tolerant, and peaceful dialogue in schools and the Poso community.
Keywords: Social media, tech, tech for peace, Indonesia, UNESCO, UN, conflict, conflict resolution, hate speech, religious intolerance
A camp organized by Messengers of Peace Liberia, photo via Messengers of Peace Liberia Facbeook page.
Over two decades after Liberia experienced its second civil war in 2003, the country still struggles to build peace. The first civil war lasted from 1989 to 1997, and the second from 1999 to 2003, with the wars killing a total of between 150,000 and 200,000 people. Longstanding issues including ethnic grievances, weak governance structures, and socio-economic challenges remain. Meanwhile, many victims of the country’s wars feel they have been denied justice, as Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has failed to implement many recommendations, such as banning perpetrators from public office.
But recently, peace camps have been empowering Liberian youth to envision a different future. In July 2025, 50 young people from Liberia’s Maryland and Grand Kru communities gathered in Monrovia for the ninth Annual Peace Through Fair Play (PTFP) Youth Camp, organized by the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa (GPFA).
For a week, the youth participated in activities teaching them to build a more peaceful Liberia. These activities included: visiting an ice-cream factory to learn about entrepreneurship; attending a service by a pastor about “walking in purpose and peace;” a session on understanding conflict and root causes of the civil wars; a session on effective communication; and a community-building workshop led by Nobel Peace Laureate Madam Leymah Bgowee.
One youth representing the campers, Kenneth Weah, told GNN Liberia, “We are not just campers, we are the voices of Liberia’s future.
Another youth peace camp was organized in Liberia in late August 2025. Messengers of Peace-Liberia (MOP) organized its seventh Annual National Youth Peace Summer Camp, welcoming over 100 youth peace messengers from all 15 counties of Liberia.
Three campers moderated a session by liou M. Dia, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Liberia. The conversation focused on mental health, self-discipline, and the importance of leadership grounded in unity and integrity. Dia expressed admiration for the campers’ energy and commitment. He stressed the importance of their passion for development and peace to Liberia’s future, The New Dawn Liberia reported.
Given Liberia’s turbulant environment, camps and other initiatives such as these play a critical role in providing youth with the chance to envision a different future. In May, Peace News Network (PNN) published an article about how positive dialogue is building peace in Liberia. Ex-combatants and former youth militia members—many of whom became commercial motorcycle riders known as ‘pen-pen riders’—were widely viewed as aggressive and dangerous. They were stigmatized and often pushed to society’s margins.
However, through intentional community dialogue and organizing, pen-pen riders began to transform public perceptions. Grassroots organizations began to form—involving the riders both as group members and dialogue participants—and acknowledged their value in getting information to people quickly when it was needed most. They led peaceful election campaigns, distributed Ebola prevention education, and spread peaceful messages on the radio and at community events. Perceptions of pen-pen riders started to shift from “violent outgroup” to “partner in peace”—not only in the eyes of community members but in the riders themselves.
In other peace initiatives in Liberia, women in peace huts have been instrumental in assisting young men who committed atrocities to re-integrate into their communities. They also lead community dialogues about peacebuilding that include men, youth, and elders.
The road to building true peace in Liberia will be difficult. However, there are steps the government can take to empower youth. In March, Dr. Ibrahim Bangura recommended in an article for PNN that the state and its development partners make consistent efforts to “empower young people through access to education, skill building, employment, and political representation, to reduce their vulnerability and provide them with legitimate avenues towards community participation.”
Doha, Qatar, where the DRC government and M23 will meet for talks. Photo by Natalya Rostun via Pexels.
This week, after violence resurfaces, DRC government and M23 resume Qatar peace talks. Pope Leo raises voice for peace in Gaza. Will Syria’s move to recruit minorities in security build peace?
After Violence Resurfaces, DRC Government and M23 Resume Qatar Peace Talks
After a resurgence of violence in July, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and leaders of the M23 armed group are resuming peace talks in Qatar. Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said on August 26 that delegations from Kinasha and M23 were meeting in Doha to review the implementation of a ceasefire deal signed in July.
The deal had intended to bring both sides to a final settlement, with talks beginning on August 8 and concluding on August 18. However, both sides accused each other of violations, and the deadlines passed without progress, Al Jazeera reports.
On August 20, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that M23 had killed over 140 people in the country’s eastern region in July in one of the group’s worst atrocities since its resurgence in 2021.
M23 rebels summararily executed these 140 civlians, mostly ethnic Hutus along with some ethnic Nandes, in at least 14 villages and farming areas in July 2025 near Virunga National Park, HRW reported. These attacks included women and children, the organization said. The M23 has denied being involved in the killings, BBC reported.
Pope Leo Raises Voice for Peace in Gaza
Pope Leo XIV is raising his voice for peace in Gaza. The pope joined Jerusalem’s Latin and Greek Orthodox Patriarchs joint appeal for an end to the the war in the strip, and for humanitarian aid to flow freely there. The patriarchs released the appeal on August 26.
Pope Leo said, “I appeal for all hostages to be freed, a permanent ceasefire to be reached, the safe entry of humanitarian aid to be facilitated, and humanitarian law to be fully respected—especially the obligation to protect civilians and the prohibitions against collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”
Will Syria’s Move to Recruit Minorities in Security build Peace?
Syria has recently seen a push to recruit Kurdish men, including religious minorities, into its security forces, The Associated Press reported on August 23. A government official said that about 1,000 men from Afrin, a Kurdish-majority area, had signed up in recent days.
This was after a UN-backed commission that investigated violence on Syria’s coast recommended in early August that authorities recruit members of minority communities for a more “diverse security force composition” to better community relations and trust.
Kurds who have recently signed up include those of Alawite and Yazidi backgrounds. One Yazidi who signed up told The AP that the did so to be “part of the Syrian army and for there to be no discrimination.”
However, one Kurdish Alawite said, “I hope that the youth of Afrin will not think badly of us because of this affiliation” with the new authorities. Some activists supporting the rights of Kurds say the initiative to recruit some young people without guaranteeing the protection of communities is “irresponsible.” Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an Iraq-based Kurdish affairs analyst, said it would depend on whether Kurds are appointed to leadership positions, and whether some Turkish-backed groups return to their original areas.
Since Syria’s new government came to power in 2024, there has been tension between authorities and minorities. Between August 3 and 4, government-affiliated fighters clashed with Druze armed groups in the province. Read more here.
Keywords: Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, Congo, DR Congo, Gaza, Pope Leo, Syria, Alawite, Kurd, Yazidi, Minorities, peace, conflict, conflict resolution
Uzima Alimasi Maïti aged 76, patriarch of indigenous people (Pygmies) in Byakato, Mambasa territory, Ituri Province, July 03, 2025. Photo by Anicet Kimonyo.
The Indigenous Pygmy peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are currently experiencing an unprecedented crisis. Pygmies are estimated to number between 700,000 and 2 million in DRC. The war tearing apart the eastern part of the country, particularly in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, has disrupted their ancestral way of life. It has exposed them to hunger, disease, and death, conditions that threaten the very existence of these first inhabitants of the DRC. Deprived of their natural habitat, the rainforest (their traditional source of food, medicine, and subsistence), they now live in dire conditions. Without rapid action, this marginalized community is heading towards extinction, which poses a threat to hopes for peace in DRC.
In Byakato, a remote city in Ituri, Uzima Alimasi Maïti observes the scale of the tragedy. This Pygmy patriarch, 76, a witness to several generations of living in the forest, fled the massacres by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in 2021 with his family to take refuge in this village in Mambasa territory. Once nomadic hunter-gatherers, his clan is now forced to settle down. “We used to live off hunting. Today, we can no longer do so, because once in the bush, we fall prey to attacks by the ADF-Nalu, who capture and kill us. I’m not happy with our life here in Byakato,” he confides bitterly.
Maïti makes no secret of his despair at the deterioration of their living conditions. He added, “there are some indigenous peoples who are starting to steal food from the population because of hunger. These indigenous people say they fear being caught and imprisoned.”
In the past, he said, pygmies ate foods such as honey, yams, wild leaves, and meat. Today, however, communities no longer have easy access to the forest due to wars. Their life expectancy has “completely diminished” he said.
While the plight of these indigenous people has attracted little attention from political authorities, some voices in civil society are sounding the alarm. Vicar Batundi Hangi, national coordinator of the NGO Foyer de Développement pour l’autopromotion des personnes indigènes et en détresse (FDAPID), is concerned about the scale of the tragedy and emphasizes the vital importance of the forest for the Pygmies. He noted that in addition to being their source of food, “It was there that they used medicinal plants to heal themselves.”
The pygmies’ lack of access to the forest, Hangi said, affects them greatly due to several factors. “They can no longer practice their traditional way of life—gathering, hunting, and fishing—and are forced to live in a sedentary lifestyle,” explains the activist, who defends the rights of indigenous peoples.
Jeannette, 29 years old, Pygmy mother of 8 children, photo taken in Sambango, Mambasa territory, Ituri province, July 03, 2025. Photo by Anicet Kimonyo.
At a camp for displaced persons in Ituri, Pygmies driven from their forests find themselves in makeshift sites, exposed to malnutrition, disease, and violence. Government and humanitarian organizations are struggling to provide them with adequate assistance in these precarious conditions.
Christophe Munyanderu, president of the Convention for the Respect of Human Rights (CRDH) in Mambasa, says Pygmies “have never been as threatened as they are today.”
The community finds itself internally displaced, scattered across several makeshift camps. Despite their recognized strength and resilience, the Pygmies are among the most vulnerable in the war ravaging eastern DRC. “The forest is now occupied by the enemy,” explains Munyanderu. “We have lost many Pygmies, particularly in Irumu and Mambasa, in this war, because they often wanted to go look for game or pick fruit, and they came across homemade bombs abandoned by the ADF.” Other pygmies are taken hostage by these groups.
Towards the end of 2024, 47 civilians, the majority of whom were Pygmy women, were massacred during an ADF attack in a remote forest village in the neighboring territory of Walese-Vonkutu, illustrating the vulnerability of the community to violence, Muyanderu said.
Jeannette, 29 years old, Pygmy mother of 8 children, photo taken in Sambango, Mambasa territory, Ituri province, July 03, 2025. Photo by Anicet Kimonyo.
In displacement camps, pygmies live in misery. Munyanderu describes the appalling living conditions that compromise the future of young Pygmies. Adding to pygmies’ vulnerability are multiple human rights violations. He cites the case of several displacement sites in Komanda (Irumu territory), and the localities of Kibonge and Mwangaza, where hundreds of Pygmies survive as best they can. “The life they lead there is not really a human life, it is a miserable life, unfortunately abandoned by the government,” he laments.
Munyanderu adds, “Some organizations supposed to protect indigenous peoples enrich themselves by filing false reports to attract humanitarian aid. You will even find young Pygmy girls who get impregnated and then abandoned, because they engage in prostitution in the belief that it will ensure their survival.”
Munyanderu says these girls can be given a small amount of money, but once they become pregnant, they are “left behind.” Some communities even reject them out of pure segregation, he said. This grim picture echoes the findings of other humanitarian workers. In the overcrowded camps, prostitution, hunger, and a lack of protection foster sexual abuse and the spread of infectious diseases. In October 2024, the army even arrested 11 Pygmies accused of stealing cocoa from abandoned fields in Irumu, a survival theft and direct consequence of the hunger gripping these displaced people.
Beyond the human tragedy, the attacks on and abandonment of the Pygmies also pose, according to Hangi, a threat to peace and the ecological balance of the region. The Pygmies of the DRC are recognized as a “globally protected” indigenous people, he points out, and they have played a crucial role in preserving nature. “If today we continue to benefit from pure oxygen, it is because at least the indigenous Pygmy people, through their good conservation practices, have been able to preserve the forest and biodiversity, unlike other communities that seek to destroy the forest,” explains Hangi. The planned disappearance of these indigenous peoples would deprive the DRC of a guardian of its tropical forests.
Situka Mabanga, 69 years old, pygmy of Byakato, Mambasa territory, Ituri Province. Photo by Anicet Kimonyo.
It also risks fueling new tensions. The marginalization of Pygmies has already led to bloody conflicts in the past: In Tanganyika province (located in the southeast of the country), violence between Twa Pygmies and Luba Bantus has displaced nearly 600,000 people in recent years, according to the UNHCR.
Faced with this emergency, Pygmy advocates are calling for concerted action. In 2022, the DRC adopted a law protecting and promoting the rights, particularly land rights, of indigenous Pygmy peoples. But on the ground, its implementation remains a dead letter. Congolese Pygmies, who have long lived in harmony with the forest, are seeing their culture and identity dissolve in the exodus following repeated armed conflicts and poverty.
If nothing is done to improve their situation— such as strengthened security, access to the forest, and targeted humanitarian aid—an entire segment of the DRC’s human and ecological heritage could be wiped out. And with it, any hope of lasting peace in a region gripped by chaos would vanish.
Ukrainian and Russian flags, photo via University of Oxford.
Over a week after the United States-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15, 2025, hope for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia remain low. The summit did not achieve a ceasefire as it intended to, and violence has picked up.
On August 22, it was reported that US President Donald Trump had set a two-week time frame to assess Russia-Ukraine peace prospects. Originally, Trump had set an August 8 deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine or face heavy sanctions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia was avoiding the “necessity” of holding a meeting between the two countries’ leaders. Zelensky said that he could only meet with Putin after his allies agreed on security guarantees for Ukraine to deter Russian attacks.
A US official told France 24that military chiefs from the United States and a number of European countries had developed military options on Ukraine and would be presenting them to their respective national security advisers
However, Russia said no to European troops in Ukraine. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said European proposals to deploy troops in Ukraine after a settlement would amount to “foreign intervention.” Lavrov said this would be absolutely unacceptable to Russia.
Both countries are preparing for further fighting. Ukraine is testing new weapons, and Zelensky said on August 21 that Russian attacks on various parts of Ukraine showed that Russia was avoiding negotiations to end the war.
On the same day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a podcast broadcast on Facebook that Hungary has offered to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine twice, and the offer still stood. This development came after, on August 19, Politico reported that the White House was planning for a possible trilateral meeting between the US, Russian, and Ukrainian presidents in Budapest, according to a Trump administration official and a person close to the administration.
However, on August 24, Lavrov said that there were no plans for peace talks between Putin and Zelensky. Lavrov told NBC that Putin was ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda was ready for a summit, “and this agenda is not ready at all.”
Lavrov said that a group including Security Council members should guarantee Ukraine’s security. He noted that this group could include Germany and Turkey among other countries. However, Lavrov stressed that the guarantors “would be guaranteeing the security of Ukraine, which must be neutral, which must be non-aligned with any military bloc and which must be non-nuclear.”
Lavrov also insisted that NATO membership for Ukraine was unacceptable for Russia, that there was a territorial discussion to have with Ukraine, and that Russia wanted protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, fighting and fierce rhetoric has continued, with an end to the conflict nowhere in sight. From December 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025, 986 civilians were killed and 4,807 injured in Ukraine, a 37 percent increase compared to the same period the previous year. Russian civilians have also been killed in Ukrainian attacks.
