PRESS RELEASE : Young people, especially women and girls, should be meaningfully included in discussions that affect their futures: UK statement at the UN Security Council [April 2024]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 17 April 2024.

Statement by Ambassador Barbara Woodward at the UN Security Council meeting on security challenges in the Mediterranean.

President, to achieve lasting peace, the whole of society is required to participate in building it. Without the diverse perspectives that youth and marginalised groups represent, we will struggle to build peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable societies.

I wish to make three points.

First, the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund is a key instrument promoting the positive role of young people as agents of peace. The UK has provided over $35 million to the Peacebuilding Fund since 2020, which has implemented youth-related projects, including in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Libya. We welcome the implementation of the Peacebuilding Commission’s Strategic Action Plan on youth and peacebuilding, including the annual meeting on youth, peace and security, as well as efforts to integrate analysis that is sensitive to this agenda into the commission’s key deliverables.

Second, there is clear evidence that young people, especially young women and girls, are disproportionately impacted by climate change and biodiversity loss, often exacerbated by existing inequalities. But they are also agents of change in the response. In the Mediterranean region, heat waves, floods, sandstorms, and water stress contribute to the loss of food security and livelihoods, directly affecting the drivers of migration. We need to manage, carefully, the emerging challenges and opportunities of migration, including by recognising the role of young people in delivering adaptation solutions that provide people with options for sustainable livelihoods that do not compel them to migrate.

Third, young people live with the effects of conflicts they did not start. Young people, especially women and girls, should be meaningfully included in discussions that affect their futures, including in this Council. So we should translate our commitments into action by strengthening their full, equal, safe and meaningful inclusion in decision-making and peace, development and mediation processes.

President, we will continue to work with the international community to amplify youth voices and harness their lived experience across peace processes and the work of government.

I thank you.