Youth, Peace and Security: A Non-Negotiable Item for Colombia
Para leer este artículo en español: Juventud, Paz y Seguridad: Una Agenda Incondicional Para Colombia
Ensuring inclusive and meaningful youth engagement - Youth, Peace and Security Consultations for Big Impact is a project designed to amplify youth voices and facilitate youth agency and leadership through structured consultations led by youth organisations. It seeks to offer an alternative perspective on the potential of young people as key drivers of national and global peacebuilding agendas and as rights holders shaping policy and governance frameworks. Fundación Latir, based in Colombia, is one of the 9 youth-focused organisations selected as part of the GIZ-sponsored YPS Consultations for Big Impact grant. The organisation has been one of the pioneers of YPS in the country, leading the Colombian Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security, and has played a key role in promoting the implementation of the first National Action Plan on YPS in Latin America.
In this article, Fundación Latir reflects on the importance of the adoption of a National Action Plan for Colombia.
YOUTH, PEACE AND SECURITY: A NON-NEGOTIABLE AGENDA FOR COLOMBIA
There can be no lasting peace or security without youth. And yet, for decades, these rights have been denied, postponed, or made conditional for young people.
Peace and security are not concessions or favours granted by the State; they are fundamental rights. For youth, these rights translate into clearly identifiable public policy dimensions.
The prevention of violence through effective access to relevant education, decent work, comprehensive health, including mental health, and sustainable economic opportunities; meaningful and binding participation in decision-making processes that affect our lives and territories; comprehensive protection from armed, structural, and symbolic forms of violence; recognition of youth as strategic actors in the construction of peace and security, with leadership, agency, and influence; and sustained institutional support to ensure implementation, monitoring, and accountability. These conditions form the foundation for young people to build possible futures without fear.
In 2015, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 established a global framework for the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda, recognising young people as key actors in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. However, ten years later, global progress remains limited: fewer than a dozen countries currently have National Action Plans to implement this agenda.
In Colombia, this urgency is not abstract. For decades, armed violence and structural exclusion have disproportionately affected youth, limiting our access to rights, opportunities, and participation. Youth insecurity cannot be explained solely by direct violence, but also by persistent inequalities that erode the social fabric and weaken democracy.
In response to this reality, Colombia is moving forward with the consolidation of the first National Action Plan on Youth, Peace and Security in the Americas, setting a regional precedent. This process has been built from civil society and from the territories, led by youth organisations that have worked for peace for many years, even in adverse contexts and without institutional recognition.
Today, the National Action Plan is technically developed. The challenge now is political: its effective implementation. This requires political will, budgetary allocation, inter-institutional coordination, and participatory monitoring mechanisms to ensure long-term sustainability. The Plan must transcend political cycles and be consolidated as a State policy.
Peace and security are not guaranteed by norms alone, but by rights in practice. They are built when prevention replaces reaction, when decent work competes with illicit economies, when mental health is treated as an integral part of public policy, and when youth participation is binding rather than merely symbolic.
Youth is not a problem to be managed. We are the transformative force that sustains community life and drives social change.
Investing in youth is not a sectoral choice. It is the most strategic decision for shaping the future of Colombia and the region.
Now is the time to speak openly about this National Action Plan, to ask questions, and to actively monitor its implementation. The Youth, Peace and Security agenda will only be effective if it becomes a public conversation and a policy accompanied by active citizenship.
We invite you to learn more about this process, to follow its progress, and to engage from your leadership, organisation, and territory. This agenda has been built collectively and can only be sustained through active civic participation.
Learn more about their work
These three articles reflect civil society’s contribution to the Second Global Study on the Youth, Peace and Security agenda. Drawing from experiences in Colombia and Latin America, they seek to highlight key lessons and bring urgent issues to the forefront in order to strengthen the agenda and its impact on young people’s lives.
To learn more about this process and follow the development of the Plan, you can connect with Fundacion Latir via: direccion@fundacionlatir.org, visit their website Fundacion Latir or follow them on Social Media.