A place at the table: Advocating for youth engagement in Palestine
Last week at the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit 2015 in Washington, SPARK’s YEP Programme Manager Simon van Melick met with Hania Bitar, founder and director-general of the Palestinian youth organisation PYALARA, and Maiko Nakagaki from the American organization CIPE, to make a plea for youth engagement in fragile and conflict affected regions across the world, and in particular Palestine. According to the presenters, youth participation needs to be much higher on the international policy and the political agenda, since youth form merely a substantive group in these regions – often even a majority.
Hania Bitar opened her appeal with the statement “Youth deserve a place at the table”, before taking the audience on a 15 minute tour through the Palestinian landscape of violent conflict, an inaccessible and patriarchal political system and numerous inspiring youth activities and achievements. Bitar grew passionate about supporting the development of youth in Palestine, due to her concern that Palestine’s youth will become frustrated and disenchanted by the harsh conditions in which they live.
Bitar emphasized the importance of youth engagement in Palestine: ‘Youth need to be able to participate in order to build our society. Youth need to enter decision-making positions in both the public and private sectors for example. Youth need also to participate in politics.’ That means that youth must improve their knowledge and skills, but it also means that political parties, civil society organizations, government and private sector need to collaborate as well, lower their thresholds and open their doors for real involvement of youth. Bitar mentioned that recently the Palestinian Parliament has started to work together with a youth commission, enabling them to work together and advice members of Parliament about youth issues.
Bitar’s speech made a marked impression on the audience and it was clear her 15 years experience in Youth Engagement issues make her a leading authority in this field. It is such expertise that led SPARK to invite Bitar to deliver a keynote speech at the forthcoming IGNITE! conference, entitled ‘Doing Business in Fragile States’ on November 11th 2015. For more information about the conference’s speakers and workshops and to register, click here.
