What does it actually mean. This panel is the son of prevention. People working every day to prevent the kind of violent extremism we want to prevent around the world. They are doing it in innovative ways. Let me tell you who we have here. This is the youth panel. In nigeria, even into your 40s, you are counted as youth. I am in that panel as well. [laughter] next to him is the director of phd. V h and a we are eager to hear your perspectives. Obama foundations dollar and cofounder of the arts initiative. His from south sudan. But nowthis initiative you are based in chicago doing a degree there. Welcome as well. The cofounder and board member of crown the woman south sudan. Two members of the south sudan agencies. Since we have two of you from south sudan, maybe we can start their. We were given a Tour De Force and south sudan could be on that list. There is peace at the moment and a deal coming to the new government in february but there was six years of war and nearly half the country is displaced. When you hear us use words like vernons and prevention here in thosegton, d. C. , what do words mean . Think for the thank you for the opportunity. Sudan, those are very sudan forink 4s south sudan, we are working out those words for governance and to have prevention. I dont know if prevention is the right word. A context of a country that was given birth as an insult of decades of conflict. Understand. We no nothing but violence and war and we believe that if i react violently is the best way can be understood. It is difficult to grab the concept of what it means to live in peace. We are still signing Peace Agreements. We just revitalized one last year and has extended the period twice in an attempt to form a Transitional Government to have a taste of what its like to have a Leadership Structure that is functional in place. What that means is it still takes us back to the decades warlords country had being transferred or translated to peacemakers. You have agreements being signed based on a number of People Killed or the number of people you have displaced comes your leverage at the become short leverage at the negotiation table. The only way you get to be heard is the amount of guns that you have in the amount of atrocities have committed. We are trying to transform our country by using the same people that caused the problem to try and solve the problem. It is clearly not going so well for us as a country. We are figuring out what it means to have Good Governance. I would say that is the context we speak of fragility and we have no distinction between independent institutions because Everything Else is militarized. That makes prevention efforts extremely difficult, especially for people who come from and trying tods use nonviolent actions to settle conflict but speaking to people who only understand violent means of resolving a conflict. When we talk about countering violent extremism, people have thoughts about what that might include. You work in an arts collective. Why do you do that and how does that connect to the work of countering violent extremism. Thank you. Initially asked what do we understand about governance and prevention and south sudan. The word we understand most in south sudan is violence, because that is what we have been subjected to. Date, we hado stability for only two years. Us, understanding what governance means, you get to the idea of democracy of freedom of expression and respect of the rule of. That is some of the things our country lacks. It is more an militarization. Have not really politicians in our country. We have military generals running the country in more of a military way. It is a coal mine. These people have created an thatof Coalition Building kept them in that position. It is not easy to break through the barriers. Are using with before 2013 and after 2013, people were at a point where we were just watching with lined eyes and not seeing we were seen but not saying anything. You cant say anything. And then you sit back because there is so much repression you get into when you speak to issues happening within the country, especially when you get to an idea of a lucian and having things to do with youth involvement and women involvement in political spaces feel wecannot feel there should be new leaders. If you reflect back on some of , theyatements back then had this generation that was it was saidarmy and that it is now the destruction of sudan is that we will destroy the old sudan and the young generation will fix a new sedan. If you try to remind them what. S fix a new sudan if you try to remind them what is it is dangerous. Remember those jailed for talking. He was taken in for just speaking out and giving ways of the leadership. The operations we used as an initiative, we felt that when you speak alone on the right ideas and getting into spaces ands talking, you get in trouble. We came up with a creative way to get people into discussion and to be able to bring up new ideas and bring together this energetic young people with Creative Ideas on how they would want to look at an ideal country they want to live in. Music, spoken word, ofater to speak on issues concern in south sudan. Something in an entertaining manner, it brings people together and you can pass your message. It fosters the idea of public discussion and people Start Talking among themselves. So manye it today, young people out there are able to speak their mind on social media or in public spaces when we organize such events. That is the approach we are using. Softese may sound like tools but they are powerful and potentially effective as the report has shown arian in a way, what jacob is talking about is changing the narrative using art. You are very focused on your studies or tell me about that context you bring, especially in north africa which is different than sudan. Hello, everybody. Organization, since 2013, we started working on tv programs. Since 2000, we have been telling the government and the dictator that something should be done among the rising radel causation of the youth rising radicalization of the youth. With seen a rate of we have seen a rise of radicalization. We have seen the rise of protest in 2011 and that was because the government didnt address the religiousome clear policies in tunisia. To the 1980ss and the afghan radicalization process and also to the consequences of the iranian revolution, on womens rights, oferalism in islam, the rise a bigger hearted jihad. We have a study on the causes of youth radicalization, which is explaining. We detected that there is big the generation of tv programs. Let say websites and facebook pages and so on. The first generation targeted women and we know in tunisia and some countries that tv programs were using satellite to broadcast in tunisia but also in some european countries. And they are bringing a lot of housewives and Unemployed People to more radicalized views on religion. Bring theen trying to attention of the people to this problem. Thatvery grateful today you helped me raise my voice about these issues. Are stillrams broadcasting and nurturing radicalization. All of our security efforts at the global level will not give enough response if we dont work theseer on countering through youtube but also through tv programs. Also among the young generation in tunisia at least, we see, through youtube, facebook, which is very popular in tunisia, there is still big groups of radicalized others using s using this free space to radicalize young people. We cannot do a lot against it. But in our organization, we produced videos that you can find on our Youtube Channel. Videos are bringing positive narrative stories. We have a story of a young grouper who joined a which is a terrorist group in the early 2013s and thanks to , he was resilient. He is telling his story in a short film. We are taking this to the secondary schools because we think there is big vulnerability among teenagers. This is why we target in our work women and teenagers from 11 to 18. This is part of our work. Sampson intobring the discussion. In Northern Nigeria in particular, you see similar themes from what we heard in tunisia, but you are working on electoral and political reform. How do you connect that and why is that such a priority and how does it connect to the radicalization of young people . Samson thank you for inviting me to share some perspectives on this. There is a connection. And the reports are very clear on the nexus between a leadership recoupment process and fragility. What we have today are fractured societies. Between a disconnect the citizens because our elections have been typified by by many politics and have a transparent leader. Recoupings are about orey spent for elections just for personal objectives. With fragility and violence, there is exclusion and political exclusion. You take responsibility out of the democratic process, you just have leaders who simply run the affairs of state without regard to the people. Look at uganda. To run who is intending for office is unable to run because of the onslaught of a clamp down on the government criminalizing political aspiration. , a fewgo to liberia rs ago, today the citizens are very. Iscontent with the leadership ,f you come to nigeria as well i could go on and on. There is a connection. And that is why if you fix elections and politics, there is havebability it will leaders who will deliver democracy. Ou empower the people if we dont put people at the center of governance, than the attempt to bridge this between state and citizens will be notion it is the exclusion that creates the opportunity for young people to say i dont feel connected to my government there you talked about commanders disconnect from government. How do we fix that . . Hat is actually working some of the challenges you talk about in liberia or uganda, it feels too difficult to address in the short run. What do you do in the short run good what are you doing today . Up where want to pick he stopped the value and importance of democracy and getting too politically elected leaders into power. When you dont have an opportunity to choose your leader as a citizen, you have someone imposed on you to lead you. I would say you have leaders who have committed atrocities and so they are governing who are terrified and traumatized of this particular leader. There is no room for accountability. You have citizens who can settle for any small thing they get. They dont even look at provision of services as a responsibility of the people in leadership. The ability to have citizens that can hold their leaders accountable because this is not someone that i put into this position and came to another channel and he or she can use that channel to go back out if it doesnt get the interest met at the table. It is difficult in south sudan to be specific because when you talk about exclusion, i would speak as a woman first of all and also as a young people. I am dealing with two challenges that i need to address individually before i can make it into any space. When we look at the National Trend when people talk about the youth in south sudan, the picture in their mind is a young man. They are not thinking about women. People say we have to talk about they exclusion and when talk about young people who are unemployed, they talk about the youth on the streets becoming gangs. Looking at the young girl forced into marriage as a youth issue. We have issues that as a young person you grow up from an adam womant an adolescent girl to a woman. I feel that as someone who comes and belongs to women groups and coalitions, one of the ways this has been in advocacy anis opportunity in the capacity of young people with training and leadership skills and getting people to be comfortable airing out their issues. I think it is working because if i at the revitalized agreement, the mechanisms developed to oversee the Peace Agreement have a lot of young people that sit on the board. The board as a womans representative and i am definitely a young woman. I am a youth in a way and also a young women. The security review board and the other boards have young to and youth that sit beside the representatives. It is enabling citizens to be reflected in some extremely politicized spaces that young people dont eventually get to. The other challenge with that is also when you come from a society, theres very little influence you can make because there are still not very many people taking interest in politics because it is not purely politics it is militarized politics. At some point you have influence but you get blocked when it gets to a point where representation and decisionmaking is by those who actually feel like they have the positions they are in. It is something we are struggling with. From the society perspective, there is a lot of Movement TowardYoung Movement people. You talk about citizens not even expecting the government to provide services and if you change that, you fundamentally change the way people look at their government. Not expect a woman to be on a panel or a young person to run for office. What does it mean like what you have created in nigeria . How did people respond to that . We come from a continent where when you talk about transition, people think you are wishing them death. We come from a continent where talk, people think you have dug their grave and they are waiting to die and you bury them. That is the tragedy of my own generation. Leadershipolitical on the continent of africa that does not think about the future. Their own conceptualization of the future is a feature of themselves, their tribes, and those who have political affiliations with them. A leaderships are problem and if we fix leadership, for a lot of young people just understanding that readership is a big problem on the continent of africa. It is time for them to rise up and we are going to get into politics that if you say politics it will transform politics. It is simply how we use political power for the common good. You can have a young president of africa. It is not a guarantee. If you have 60 of African Leaders as young people, it prosperity in africa. You get with content and competence into office, our continent will make progress. Lets open up the space. That is why young people who rose up with support of different partners to advocate for a reduction of age in our constitution. Where we changed our constitution from the and there was a generation that cared about inclusive politics. That is what we are doing. In the last elections, for the first time in nigeria, we had onween youth 29 229 who sit parliament and our legislators for the people youth between 0 and 29 who sit on parliament and are under slaters for the people. There are people today in Public Office who have no business in Public Office. How do we expect to make progress . Thedo we expect to address economic and Development Challenges that we face as a continent . If you look at migration and boko haram and insurgent groups who are recruiting and radicalizing Young Children it is because we are not creating opportunities for those children. My generation is saying we are not going to sit back and complain but we are going to take action. That is an action young people are taking to say enough is enough. We care about the future and we are going to take steps to bring africa to progress. What do you want us to know about the region you are in . Tunisia is a recent government with a historic high number of women in cabinet positions now, i believe. There are many sense of progress many signs of progress. But it has been a challenging environment. What do you want us to know here in washington about the region and the opportunity to take this new prevention of approach prevention approach when some might think the military approach is the way to go . Congratulatee to new actal world for the because it is mentioning preventing violent extremism problems as a problem to be addressed on different levels. Is the security level which is normal, but i think that 30 to 40 years linked to violent extremism and religious extremism on a security level wasnt enough to address the problem. For me, it is a very Good Opportunity to raise my voice about the ideological problems. As an islamic studies professor, i have to point out that there are four populations and unemployed populations, but unemployment, poverty does not push people to be terrorists. There are some seeds of radicalization linked to dozens of islamic schools and dozens of ers. Calizin we see it in my area and in west africa, very challenging environments. It is very fragile north africa now. It is more fragile than it was in 2011. So what should we do globally to make north africa, west africa, also the mediterranean area more stable . Because if the mediterranean area and europe is more fragile, than i think its also a challenge for Homeland Security here in the u. S. Everything is linked in a way. Storm. Tunisia is in a as you can see, there are very challenging moments leading me to challenge the decisionmakers and what is the role of africa and what should be done to make the mediterranean area more stable . What are the ambitions for the of water and linked to Energy Ambitions in liberty libya . Libyanders linked to conflict, the western borders of libya, are challenging because groupsre a lot of armed and a big number of terrorist groups linked sometimes to the government. As a tunisian woman, have to say this conflictgh is very complex, it is more challenging and exposing more children and women. New waysmes expect now waves of refugees into tunisia if the conflict rises. We are not prepared to receive big numbers of refugees. Among the refugees, there will be women and children and a lot should be done. For the moment, there is not big readiness that we expect as a Civil Society to help these groups. Allow me to come back to our work as an ngo on peace building work. We started working on a project called 100 ambassadors of peace. It was targeting policewomen and professors of education, because we felt it is important to empower policewomen and help some women to be powerful in tunisia but even outside. Some are working in peacekeeping missions in the congo, and we trained them on the resolution 1325 and securities resolution and still a lot should be done on giving budget, because we