Peace by All Means

Following the Global Power Shift, I flew to Trabzon, the beautiful city on the Black Sea coast of North-Eastern Turkey, where,  I spent 5-day workshop on conflict transformation, post-conflict peace building and reconstruction with 70 young activists and professionals from 47 countries. 

As conflict, crisis and disaster academics, practitioners, consultants, activists and students, we looked beyond dominant theories relating to youth in conflict and explored the challenges of youth exclusion from peace-building activities and decision making. As such, the basis, rationale and formation process of young people’s relationships with societal structures and negotiation both through established and unconventional means, and how this impact on peace processes in contested and divided places were practically discussed and examined.

At the plenary session of the last day of the workshop, I presented with few team members the digital tools and techniques to use for peace work with the Bahraini refugee and human rights defender Ahmed Al-Haddad

After the opening ceremony, we have been divided into three groups: “Peace by Established means”, “Peace by Virtual means” and “Peace by No means”. I have joined the workshop stream with the theme; “Peace by virtual means”. A facilitator from Nigeria led the workshop with contributions from professors in conflict management from the United Kingdom, Israel and Turkey. We focused on collective action of young people in maximizing the use of all existing virtual tools and distinguishing “good practice” of this medium from its “best practice”. We explored how youth can use technology as a tool for collective action and a means for achieving their peace-building and social change goals, particularly in zones of conflict, social and political contestation.

The Global Peace and Youth workshop was organised by CESRAN International, the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies (CPRS) at Coventry University, the Department of International Relations at Karadeniz Technical University and the support of Trabzon province government.