Youth Agency in Peacebuilding

Abstract

AbstractMore than 600 million young people today live in economically and environmentally fragile contexts. Scholarly literature on the interconnections between these young people and religion has often portrayed them as prone to radicalization and drawn to violent extremism. Such framings, however, render invisible their potential as agents for positive change. In this article, we take a step back to consider more basic questions about the socio‐political significance of youth leadership in (inter)religious contexts for the cultivation of peace. In particular, we focus on youth, religion, and religious representations of insider and outsider “others.” In this article, we report on the youth‐focused programme Enemy, Stranger, Neighbor, Friend, aiming to contribute to understanding the complexities that youth working in conflict prevention, informal peace education, and interreligious work face and the contributions they can make.