The ministerial echoed the 2024 study on the same topic, not only in its title, but also in its limited focus on youth and the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) Agenda. From the perspective of one of the youth observers of the PKM, this essay will look into the relevance of including youth in peacekeeping efforts and whether the PKM in Berlin offered enough space to discuss this pressing issue.

In its 77-year-long history, peacekeeping has undergone drastic changes. What started mainly as observatory monitoring missions has developed into multidimensional peacekeeping missions. These developments have taken place against a backdrop of multiple serious scandals, critiques, questions of legitimacy, and an increasingly complex conflict landscape. Confronted with the need to find solutions to these challenges, youth are often referred to as the “future”.

Whether in the climate movement, protesting the conflict in Gaza, or the social movements of Sudan or Iran, globally, youth have become leading agents for change. Formal studies have already proven that more inclusive peace processes promote more sustainable peace. Also in the UN context, this potential is recognised within the YPS agenda, or S/RES/2250, which stresses the positive impact of youth in promoting peace and security, and calls for the integration of YPS into peacebuilding and peacekeeping mechanisms. Nevertheless, only 18% of peace agreements between 2015 and 2022 included provisions on children and youth.

Looking more closely at individual missions, there have been some notable efforts in integrating the YPS agenda. The 2022 UN Peacekeeping Operations and the Five Pillars of Action for YPS report points out that the institutionalisation of the YPS agenda in peacekeeping missions is on the rise. For instance, MONUSCO in the DRC has been working on including youth in local peace agreements, and UNMISS in South Sudan is working with UNDP and governmental organisations to integrate youth in formal political and legal processes. Regardless, the same studies note that these developments remain dependent on continuous efforts, as well as the investment of financial and human resources.

The PKM serves the purpose of collecting pledges, meaning financial or operational support, from member states. Thus, the pledges that are collected during the ministerial can impact the direction of future peacekeeping efforts. Germany, as the host country, has contributed a comparatively significant pledge of 82 Million Euros towards peacekeeping, but the contributions remained rather minimal compared to previous years. There has been a positive trend in many member states, including the Netherlands, investing in the Elsie Fund or other efforts to promote the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. This was a core issue mentioned in the study “The Future of Peacekeeping, New Models, and Related Capabilities”, which served as the basis for this year’s PKM. Also youth was an important focus in said study. For instance, it stressed the importance of youth-inclusive representative institutions and acknowledged the need for younger personnel in their missions to find new solutions to increasingly complex challenges. Regardless, pledges mentioning youth or the YPS agenda were missing entirely.

Beyond the lack of dedicated financial support, little space was offered to discuss how to further promote YPS. The organisers visibly attempted to make a dent by inviting youth observers and youth representatives from civil society, who used the space to criticise increased defence spending or the youth’s limited access to high-level peace processes. Regardless, even if their participation has been positively noted in the chair’s summary, neither the pledges nor any of the concrete actions discussed reflect any further engagement with the topic. So, despite an increased awareness, in practice, the youth remain largely an afterthought.

Yet it appears that not only youth but peacekeeping in general has become less of a priority. Amid the UN funding crisis, the $5.59 billion 2024-25 peacekeeping budget and additional pledges collected at the PKM pale in comparison to the over $2.71 trillion globally spent on defence. So, as 1.2 billion people between the ages of 15 and 24, or roughly 16% of the world’s population, are growing increasingly disillusioned with peacekeeping, world leaders are upping their military spending and threatening the lives of millions by withholding UN funding. Youth-inclusive peacekeeping must not only be a priority because of its positive impact on peace. Children and youth are also especially vulnerable to homelessness, recruitment into criminal groups, abduction, and various forms of exploitation as a result of violent conflict. Thus, next to the positive potential they hold, they also represent a complex victim and perpetrator group.

Given the amount of formal research, studies, resolutions, and UN agendas available, the underfunding of peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, in particular those related to YPS, cannot be interpreted as a crisis of misunderstanding or lack of research, but one of political will. As mentioned by Kholood Khair at the PKM Break-out Session “The Future of Peacekeeping”, including the youth is not only nice to have but essential to promote sustainable peace and development. To ensure that this is seen as a priority by world leaders, the “future” needs to be in the room where it happens. Inviting civil society youth representatives and youth observers is only a small step in ensuring the inclusion of youth in political decision-making processes, and by extension, promoting a more peaceful and inclusive future. Representation does not replace financial and human resource support. As such, the failure of member states to recognise this potential for peace and invest in integrating the youth into their frameworks actively opposes the PKM’s goal of imagining the future of peacekeeping.