Adolescents and Youth

This Technical Note aims to help guide programming intended to prevent and address the recruitment and use of children by armed groups in today’s conflicts.

This report seeks to answer the following question: what knowledge, skills and attitudes do children and adolescents need to cope with conflict, resolve conflict, promote peace, and contribute to peace processes? A secondary question considered in this report is: how can we effectively teach peace knowledge, skills and attitudes in conflict-affected situations?

This Guidance Note offers tools and methods which UNICEF Country Offices can use to ensure the safe and meaningful participation of adolescents when doing a conflict analysis.

In this compendium, eight experts in adolescent neuroscience and development summarize scientific and programmatic evidence from their work, offering an insight into how to maximize the potential of adolescents during this period of opportunity, but also vulnerability.

This study describes how societies and dynamics surrounding young people in Mali and Cote d’Ivoire structure the trajectories of some towards violence.

This study evaluates the effects of the volunteers’ interventions as part of the Ebola response from the perspective of the volunteers themselves and other key stakeholders. It focuses on five key areas: relevance, efficiency, results and effectiveness, partnership, and sustainability.

10 young people were trained by Insightshare to carry out an evaluation using Participatory Video combined with Most Significant Change (PV MSC) for UNICEF WCARO and UNICEF Côte d’Ivoire. The aim of the activity was to carry out an end of year participatory evaluation led by students and young people who participate in the PBEA programme that UNICEF and partners lead in Côte d’Ivoire.

This film shows the results of the evaluation focused on the work of UNICEF with Search for Common Ground to reinforce ‘Peace Clubs’ and empower students, citizen of tomorrow to become ‘champions’ of peace through trainings in conflict transformation and mediation, participatory theatre, radio programmes and sports.

This evaluation and the associated videos hope therefore to address this and to look more closely at this programme which works with youth, who were socialized in violence, to help them play a positive role in society and become promoters of peace. 

In 2012, UNICEF launched the Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy Program in 14 countries including Uganda. The program has aimed to contribute to address conflict drivers related to education and contribute to peace and social cohesion.

In this report the findings from a qualitative assessment carried out among 3 pilot schools in Napak District is presented together with feedback from students from approximately 20% of participating schools.

This case study critically examines the peacebuilding impact of a UNICEF-BRAC adolescent/youth development intervention in Karamoja implemented in 2015 under the Peacebuilding Education and Advocacy (PBEA) Program.

This project is part of UNICEF’s Learning for Peace programme. UNICEF has worked with young people across Côte d’Ivore to set up the “Action Justice and Peace” Network to engage in national reconciliation processes and train youth leaders to document young people’s experiences of the recent conflict.

Between April and September 2016, a participatory video project in Mindanao, the Philippines brought together young representatives from four different religious/cultural backgrounds to explore and document how conflict related issues affect youth in the region and to articulate their visions for a more peaceful future.

This case study however did not just aim to capture if and to what degree the CFS project influenced significant changes in the lives of the children at the school in Sawula and the surrounding communities. It also aimed to provide insights into how those changes have taken place and if there were any significant links between peace, conflict and children’s education.

The aim of the activity was to carry out a qualitative end-of-programme participatory evaluation led by youth who participated in the PBEA programme at the same time as building capacity in the trainees and delivery agencies.

This project aimed to reinforce skills, consolidate peace among the youth and create solidarity between residents and returnees through trainings in conflict mediation, dialogue, participatory theatre and radio. This was part of an InsightShare participatory video evaluation carried out for UNICEF in collaboration with Ubuntu Centre, PEAB and ASB.