Untapped Potential: Displaced Youth

Youth, a stage of life marked by uncertainty, change and challenge, is a time of enormous potential, enthusiasm and energy, when young people make choices based on available opportunities to plan for their transition to adulthood.

Young people displaced by conflict, however, have few opportunities and, as a result, are often idle, poor and sometimes violent. They are vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation and recruitment into armies and militias.

Despite these challenges, young people show tremendous resilience and ability to survive.

Young people aged 10 to 24 make up over 30 percent of the world's 33 million displaced by armed conflict. They are crucial actors in post-conflict reconstruction and in the rebuilding of peaceful, more tolerant communities. They can help other young people through peer-to-peer training. They are the leaders of tomorrow; their rights and needs must be recognized and their skills nurtured and developed to ensure a brighter future.

In research the Women’s Commission undertook with displaced adolescents between 1999 and 2005, we found that young people are an untapped resource with few opportunities for secondary and non-formal schooling (less than 6 percent of the world’s teenage refugees, for example, attend school beyond primary school) or for developing skills that will enable them to get jobs.

Girls and young women have even greater difficulties accessing primary and secondary schooling and non-formal education than boys and young men. Further, the research found that young people have almost no opportunities to work or use the skills they possess. They are rarely consulted or allowed to participate in decisions affecting their lives. International humanitarian efforts seldom target youth. Youth are, perhaps, the most under-served amongst the displaced.

Meanwhile, too few lessons learned from working with young men and women have been documented and shared and the longer-term impact of programs targeting youth are seldom measured.

As the average length of displacement increases, the consequences of the lack of programs to serve youth escalate. With limited education and few opportunities, they risk becoming a lost generation, unable to contribute to their communities and to the eventual reconstruction of their societies and lives.

Wasting the potential of youth leads to rising frustration, anger, disenfranchisement and violence. Limited opportunities for education and ways to earn a living can result in alcohol abuse, violence, early marriage, unprotected sexual activity and prostitution-endangering both themselves and their communities.

Without access to life-saving information, such as on HIV/AIDS prevention or reproductive health, young men and women are at greater risk of unwanted pregnancies and of contracting and spreading sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS.

Displaced youth miss out on developing life and livelihood skills, which would normally be honed in their home communities and within their families through informal mentoring. The lack of opportunity for gainful employment severely restricts their chance to play a meaningful role in society.

Click here to learn about what the Women’s Commission is doing to help displaced youth.

Our youth initiative was also included in the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative. Read more.

Youth speak out

Read statements by youth:

• On education by Mohamed Alie Kanu. (Sierra Leone)
• On health by Fatmata Binta Barrie (Sierra Leone)
• On poverty and livelihood, and peacebuilding by Samai Brima (Sierra Leone)
• On gender-based violence by Abibatu Samba (Sierra Leone)