IGAD Youth Peace and Security Conference to Highlight Youth as Peacebuilders
Nairobi, Kenya — The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is set to host a landmark Youth Peace and Security Conference from August 13-14, 2025, in Nairobi.
The conference will address the unique challenges and immense potential of the region’s youth, who constitute over 60% of the total population and represent a powerful force for peace and innovation. 🌍
The IGAD region, with its youthful demographic, faces both an opportunity and a challenge. While youth are a powerful force for development, they also grapple with complex, interlinked crises that undermine their potential. The conference aims to spotlight these issues and empower young people to become central to peace-building efforts.
A core focus of the event will be the underrecognized roles of refugee and displaced youth, as well as those from cross-border communities. Living in camps, informal settlements, and urban displacement contexts, these young people face significant challenges, including limited access to education and livelihoods, trauma, and exclusion from decision-making. Despite these adversities, they consistently emerge as local peacebuilders, community organizers, and advocates.
The conference will showcase how these young leaders are already promoting stability in fragile settings. Examples include leading peer-to-peer awareness campaigns on peace and social cohesion, mediating local conflicts through youth associations, and advocating for refugee rights.
The Nairobi conference will provide a crucial platform for these voices, ensuring their experiences and strategies are integrated into regional peace and security frameworks.
The two-day event is expected to bring together young leaders, policymakers, and civil society organizations from across the IGAD member states. Discussions are anticipated to generate actionable recommendations that will shape future policies, reinforce youth participation in governance, and strengthen the region’s overall resilience.
