ADVANCING YOUTH, PEACE AND SECURITY in Kosovo together
Publisher: UNITED NATIONS MISSION IN KOSOVO KOSOVO
Volume: 36 pages, pdf
Description:
Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe with 62 per cent of its population under 25 years of age2 . Young people in Kosovo are immediate stakeholders of all political, social, economic and environmental processes and are, as well, the ones who will be leading Kosovo in the coming future. However, their opportunities for participating in political life, their chances of economic prosperity within Kosovo as well as their access to quality education remain at best limited. The segregation of communities along ethnic lines in Kosovo also has implications for the younger generation which did not experience the violent conflict themselves, but grew up in a post-conflict environment with narratives of heroes and sacrifices of their parents’ generation. Kosovo youth can and should play a crucial role in local and regional reconciliation and peacebuilding processes, yet there are many factors that challenge their involvement. While some of them are engaged in cross-ethnic communication due to studies and engagement in youth projects, the majority of Kosovo Albanian and Serbian youth do not interact with each other in their daily life and can only communicate by using a foreign language (usually English or German) as intermediary.