Monthly Archives: July 2017

the bigger picture…

So I recently came across the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2050 (2015) as well as its cousin or sibling the Amman declaration (2015). Now to those of you who don’t know what these two are, to put it across to you in layman’s and in brief, these are charters passed in 2015 that aim to increase participation and involvement of young people in pushing for the attainment of global peace, security and stability. 

It recognizes the increase in the general population of young people in the world and thus the importance of involving them, in making peace and security decisions and policy, well at least that’s how I understand it. Anyway, to answer the question which you haven’t asked or mostly likely weren’t planning on asking, Yes! These were declarations passed to give us young people a seat at the table. To some of us like me that love eating, these were declarations made so that we young people get a slice of the pizza.

I could continue with all that talk but one of us may get bored; either you my dear reader or me your probably not so dear writer, so now let me just go straight to talking about why I am talking about this. The thing is this charter is trying to ensure that by 2050 we have probably the highest levels of security and peace on the planet with young people on the front row pushing for this. We are talking about reduced and even eliminated violence, conflict hate, war etc by the year 2050.

So this got me thinking and wondering why we even have such problems in our society in the first place and my thinking led me to realise there are some little things we take for granted that can make or break us as humanity. Lets face it, when people have conflicts, in an African setting, it is usually due to a form of inequality. Maybe some are economically advantaged over others, some have access to better resources, some get better treatment etc; all this inequality can cause disgruntled individuals who would not think twice before starting a conflict; after all it would disturb the usual economic activity and pull back the advantaged or maybe create a room for the economically disadvantaged to exploit the advantaged, thereby exerting a form of induced equality.

Not that i condone other poeple being overly advantaged than others, but truth be told that is the very actual situation on the ground and we can not give a blind eye to it. Consequently most of the conflicts and agreements we have are all just all due to a struggle for equality need I say more.

People are fighting to get equal opportunity to practice their religion; people are fighting to have equal access to mineral resources; people are having civil wars to get equal access to the chance to rule or be policy makers: all these and many more in the end sum up to a struggle for equality.

So what if maybe instead focusing on ending wars, conflicts and their fellow injustices, we also focus just as much on promoting equalities? Inequality is the cause and what if we therefore dealt with the cause rather than just focusing on the symptoms and results of having inequalities.

Create equal and plenty opportunities for young people and they wont see the need to hate and want to hurt those they feel have taken their jobs.

So basically what I am trying to say is, if we are to hit that 2050 target I talked about earlier, we need to be proactive; we need to respond before the flood. We need to focus more on sustainable development goal number 10 reduced inequalities and that will take us quiet a step ahead in achieving goals number 11 and 16 which cover the scope of peace and security.

Either way, these are just my thoughts, random thoughts of a blogger, but we really need to look at the bigger picture.

#creative_submission #East_and_Southern_Africa_Regional_Consultation_on_Youth_Peace_&_Security