What to Watch in 2025
Collected contributions on where our attention should be on YPS in the year ahead
Welcome to 2025! This post marks a year since I began the YPS Observer and I’m grateful to all those who have read, shared a post, or subscribed since its inception. However, more importantly, 2025 is a big year because December will mark the first decade of the YPS agenda.
With this in mind, to kick off the year, I asked some clever practitioners and academics working on youth-inclusive peace and the YPS agenda around the world if they would share their thoughts on the year ahead. Contributors were asked to reflect on one issue or topic that they would be paying attention to this year, or that we should be paying closer attention to as a community.
Responses, as you will read below, include broad concern for the impact of fragmentation and mistrust characterising global politics and commitments to the agenda itself and young people as a population, to specific reflections on regional or national engagement with YPS as an agenda, and what a ‘YPS agenda’ can offer precarious political contexts like that in Syria. There is hope, tempered with concern, for the year ahead.
Read on for insights from Katrina Leclerc, Caitlin Mollica, Khaled Eman, Marie-Rose Tshite, Lani Anaya Jiménez, and myself.
Trust and Mistrust in a Fragmented World - Katrina Leclerc
As we enter 2025, the YPS agenda faces significant challenges from a hyperpolarized and fragmented global context. Trust—an essential foundation for genuine partnerships—has become increasingly fragile, threatening the principles of inclusion and collaboration that underpin youth-inclusive peace efforts. Mistrust among stakeholders, driven by geopolitical tensions, disinformation, and internal divisions, risks derailing progress and further marginalizing young people.
This erosion of trust is visible in several ways: increasing skepticism toward multilateral processes, exclusion of grassroots actors due to unequal power dynamics, and a widening gap between youth and decision-makers. In many regions, youth peacebuilders are navigating fractured relationships not only between States but also within their communities, compounding the challenges of fostering substantive partnerships.
To safeguard the YPS agenda, we must prioritize (re)building trust through transparent processes, equitable resource distribution, and inclusive decision-making. This includes addressing systemic inequalities that often hinder collaboration, amplifying underrepresented voices, and ensuring that partnerships are rooted in mutual accountability.
In a world where fragmentation threatens progress, trust-building is not just ideal but essential. It is the foundation upon which sustainable peace and youth leadership can truly thrive in 2025 and beyond.
Katrina Leclerc is a PhD Candidate in Conflict Studies at Saint-Paul University and co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for YPS (CCYPS).
YPS & the Transition Period in Syria - Khaled Eman
On December 8, 2024, Syrian opposition forces took control of the capital, Damascus, ending the rule of the Assad family, which had controlled the country since 1971, during which the country experienced one of the deadliest civil wars of the 21st century. Former dictator Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, while other members of his family fled to Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and other countries. However, they still left behind a heavy legacy of violence, corruption, division, sectarianism, and injustice.
There is hope and a feeling of relief among Syrians and the international community after ending Assad's rule. However, the transition process in 2025 is expected to be neither easy nor smooth due to the heavy legacy mentioned above, complex geopolitics, regional tensions, and uncertainty on how to balance all of them at once.
This is where the Youth, Peace, and Security agenda becomes critical, particularly the pillars related to disengagement, reintegration, and participation. Disengagement and reintegration provide a framework to work to address challenges posed by young people who are part of armed groups, who, if not properly engaged, could undermine the transition process and might harm minorities that share different views from theirs. By offering opportunities such as pathways to nonviolent change, decent jobs, and integration into the new Syria, these two pillars can help to build a peaceful future.
Additionally, the participation pillar offers young people in Syria the chance to reflect on their role in the new Syria. While I don’t have a recipe for what this should look like, having a central coordination body combined with local networks can be a good start to ensure joint and solid coordination and perspectives from marginalized communities and villages are channelled to decision-makers in Damascus.
Khaled Eman is a human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of Justice Call. He currently serves as a Teaching Assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a researcher at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Responsibility as Obligation: What we owe to youth - Caitlin Mollica
As we approach the 10th anniversary, member states’ willingness to implement tangible practices that fulfill their commitments to youth as partners remains critical yet overlooked.
YPS dialogues have traditionally prioritised responsibility frameworks and the participation and protection pillars. This has led to the romanticisation of youth as symbols of potential, while overshadowing the need for structural reforms to disrupt governance systems, which sustain youth exclusion. Today’s youth are burdened with addressing systemic global issues without reciprocal support, targeted resourcing for their initiatives, or proper recognition that they are citizens with non-negotiable rights. Amid the instability of 2024, the international community looked to youth to represent hope and optimism. Youth were expected to demonstrate resilience in contexts of largescale violence, and they responded leading humanitarian efforts globally.
Despite these displays of leadership, progress towards substantive inclusion remains tokenistic, and focused on the “idealised good” youth. Current efforts fail to acknowledge what the international community owe all youth as citizens with inherent rights and ownership capacities. Advancing the YPS agenda, requires that we better articulate the obligations of the partnership pillar as understood by youth peacebuilders themselves. Responsibility should be reframed as an obligation necessitating substantive action from states and donors. Youth have consistently shown their commitment to the partnership pillar. The onus now is on states and donors to shift from symbolic gestures to genuine actions that ensure peace, justice, and security for all youth.
Caitlin Mollica is a Lecturer and Deputy Program Convenor at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Regional Implementation in Latin America and the Caribbean - Lani Anaya Jiménez
In 2025 we need to pay attention to the YPS implementation in the Latin American and the Caribbean region, both at regional and national levels. Last year, we witnessed the publication of the Regional Intergenerational Meeting document, reporting on the meeting held in November 2023. The document showcases some milestones which happened in 2024 and how the young people envisioned YPS mainstreaming in the coming years.
I will be paying attention to the subregional roadmaps and the Youth Working Group of the United Nations Regional Collaborative Platform in Latin America and the Caribbean (RCP LAC), UN country teams, young activists, peacebuilders and representatives of youth organizations, governments, and the UN System (LAC office, UN Country offices, UN DPPA) interact for shaping the agenda under the agreed concepts of LAC on youth, peace, and security in convergence with the 5 YPS key pillars, authority agreements and youth agreements.
In addition, and given the political landscape in the LAC region, combined with a strong focus on militarization and securitization, we must be attentive to how governments are shaping policy and programs for young people based on their understanding and narrative of this demographic cohort. Moreover, to study how these initiatives are meaningfully including, or not, young people in the whole process.
Lani Anaya Jiménez is a peace and development expert working with different INGOs, civil society, and the UN system on peacebuilding, with a focus on youth and gender. She is PhD student at UN-Mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) conducting research on YPS mainstreaming in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Youth-led organizations “steering the ship” of the DRC YPS National Action Plan - Marie-Rose Tshite
The year 2025 holds significant importance, marking the 10th anniversary of UNSCR 2250 and the 3rd anniversary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) YPS National Action Plan (NAP), which launched in 2022.
The DRC YPS NAP implementation has been challenging due to a difficult political landscape and the lack of an allocated budget. However, youth-led organizations have assumed a more proactive approach in steering the direction of the YPS NAP toward mobilizing additional funds from external partners and raising awareness activities related to the NAP across all provinces, a responsibility that ideally belongs to the government. Although funding processes from partners can be lengthy, young people have actively engaged in training and collaborating with public officials, many of whom are unfamiliar with the YPS agenda and its relevance to their respective ministries. The dynamism of the youth has fostered cooperation between state officials and local youth organizations. To ensure inclusivity beyond urban areas, the YPS coalition in North Kivu has adapted the YPS NAP to local contexts. This effort resulted in the governor signing the Provincial Operational YPS NAP in early January 2025, localizing the initiative at the provincial level.
As we enter 2025, monitoring the blurred collaboration between local NGOs funded by external donors and the government regarding implementing the YPS NAP is important. By 2025, the Congolese government has yet to allocate any funding for the YPS NAP, making financial support a major element to observe, especially given its relevance to the partnership pillar of UNSCR 2250. International and local NGOs need to collaborate alongside the DRC government rather than independently executing YPS NAP activities through local NGOs. Additionally, effective collaboration with the established YPS mechanisms is essential for garnering political support from government officials.
Thus, the power dynamics between NGOs and state actors are important to pay attention to in 2025, as they will significantly influence budgeting and partner incentives to support the YPS NAP process in the DRC and beyond. The role of international partners working with local NGOs also complicates the DRC’s ability to evaluate its YPS NAP effectiveness. One valuable lesson for countries developing YPS NAPs is also to make sure to have a national online reporting and monitoring tool. Given the DRC’s vast geography and logistical hurdles, such a system would enable provincial youth leaders to report their activities, enhance coordination from a bottom-up approach, and keep the government informed through the Youth Ministry.
Marie-Rose Tshite is the Former National Coordinator of the STN-2250/RDC, Executive Director of Salama Women's Institute (SAWI), and a Ph.D. student at the University of Cincinnati.
Worrying Waning of Substantive Institutional Commitments - Helen Berents
As a final reflection—although it is hard to follow the careful insights of those above!—I will be particularly alert to actual activity on YPS this year. Last year, I reflected on what was ‘in store in 2024’, reflecting on three institutional markers to watch: the 3rd Secretary General’s report, the new UN Youth Office (UNYO), and the Regional ASEAN YPS Study. The SG report was published, but was a very ‘safe’ product in a complex environment as I wrote about in April. The UNYO has been relatively quiet on YPS (see below), and the ASEAN study continues to be ‘forthcoming’, held up by internal politics.
These markers are telling of the issue that I would say we need to be paying close attention to as a community this year: a waning of substantive commitment institutionally to the agenda.
2024 saw two open debates at the UNSC (April and May) for the first time since 2020, half of the agenda’s life. All YPS meetings since the passing of Resolution 2535 in July 2020 have been in the informal Arria Formula structure. The 3rd Secretary-General’s report on YPS was invoked and discussed at these meetings, and the new Assistant SG on Youth Affairs spoke at the May debate for the first time since taking up the role.
However, I am concerned about the ways in which YPS has in some places become a performative practice—invoked to indicate progressive values, and not substantively backed-up (when it is acknowledged at all).
Yes, we had UNSC Debates in 2024, but no formal marking of the anniversary in December (this is not something inculcated into the practice of the UNSC in the way that WPS has been able to ensure its annual debate for example), and no solid commitments in terms of resourcing.
Yes, YPS was mentioned explicitly in the Pact for the Future, but the language was weakened in revisions and the concrete action: a second Progress Study, is due
later this year,by next year (“end of the 80th session of the UNGA”, however there has been no visible activity on it, raising questions of how substantive a report can be. [edited this as a astute reader noted I had mixed up my years and there is more time for the report to be written!]Yes, the UNYO ASG Paullier has spoken on YPS, met the Civil Society Coalition on YPS in June, and affirmed the UNYO as the technical secretariat for the Group of Champions on YPS. However, Paullier and the UNYO made no unique statement or celebration on the Dec 9 anniversary on any social media (I checked LinkedIn, X, Bluesky and Instagram). They did retweet a United States Institute of Peace post and tweet/ posted on Instagram about a year-old report from UNDPKO on YPS. While a lot of work obviously occurs behind the scenes that we don’t see, a lack of visible championing of the agenda weakens it institutionally, and sends a message to youth advocates that they lack support.
Yes, regional bodies and national governments have enthusiastically started to develop YPS ‘roadmaps’ and National Action Plans (NAPs). However, as a cautionary tale: two and a half years after both the Philippines and the DRC ‘launched’ their YPS NAPs—neither are public, neither are funded, and as Marie-Rose writes in her contribution above, it is youth organisations keeping the efforts going.
I’m not writing this as a pessimist. However, 2025 certainly is a critical juncture. As we head towards the tenth anniversary of the agenda at the end of the year, 2025 will prove whether states, IOs, I/NGOs, and other leaders are really committed to the tenets of the agenda around meaningful participation, partnership, and the protection of young people; not just performative virtue signalling when convenient.
What are you paying attention to on YPS in the year ahead? Please feel free to contribute your insights in the discussion below.
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