By: Shayne Wong and Imogen Fraser, Canadian Coalition for Youth, Peace & Security (CCYPS)
As a new federal government takes shape, there is an opportunity for Canada to strengthen and expand its commitments and actions in peace and security. In 2024, Canada’s third National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (CNAP3) was introduced. The CNAP not only reaffirmed and outlined the government’s commitments to peace and security in regard to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda but recognised the key synergies between WPS and the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda.
The YPS agenda, introduced in 2015 with UN Security Council Resolution 2250, recognises the roles, leadership, and agency of young people as peacebuilders rather than passive actors in peace processes or as violent extremists in conflict. The new Canadian federal government has the opportunity to build and expand on these initial recognitions of YPS in Canada and develop real, tangible commitments to the implementation of the agenda, including meaningful youth engagement at all levels, concrete funding opportunities for youth-led initiatives, and creating safe spaces for 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals within peace and security.
Why YPS for Canada?
A 2023 Statistics Canada report on socioeconomic obstacles and youth well-being in Canada highlighted that young people face insecurity due to the high cost of living, housing inaccessibility, precarious employment, and mental health struggles. These obstacles are in addition to, and often exacerbated by, longstanding structural inequalities that impact young women and 2SLGBTQIA+ folk, youth with disabilities, as well as racialized and indigenous youth.
With this in mind, issues of youth in peace and (in)security cannot be seen simply as something that concerns our foreign policy and supporting young people in global conflict zones. Young people here in Canada are facing a multitude of threats and vulnerabilities. As part of the call to ‘localize’ and ‘bring home’ peace and security agendas developed on the global stage, a serious commitment to institutionalizing YPS in Canada will allow the new government to show up for its youth. In what follows, we look at three ways in which this might be done.
Claiming Space
In Beyond Tokenism: A Toolkit for Genuine Youth Participation in Civic Spaces, the Canadian Coalition for Youth, Peace & Security (CCYPS) reported that young people across Canada experienced barriers in their ability to engage at all levels – particularly decision-making ones. These barriers have not only limited the ability for young people to engage in key spaces but have silenced youth voices, leaving them absent from policy and practice domestically and internationally. In particular, this has affected the most marginalised young people, including Indigenous, low-income, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, and young people living with disabilities. This exclusion allows for issues that disproportionately affect youth, such as access to secure and long-term employment, to be left off policy agendas.
The new federal government has the opportunity to rectify this issue and address persistent barriers by promoting and ensuring the full and meaningful engagement of young people at all levels – particularly at the decision-making level. This means not merely having a single young person in the room or treating it as a checkbox exercise – the meaningful engagement of youth means recognising and respecting their agency while ensuring their voices and perspectives are fully included in policy and practice.
Sustainable Funding for YPS Initiatives
Across the country, young people are already engaged and leading change in their communities. Youth can be seen at the forefront of many movements, including climate justice, gender and racial equality, and the development of inclusive spaces for all in peace and security. However, their efforts are too often underfunded, undervalued, or supported only through short-term, precarious grants. This limits their ability to create sustainable change not only amongst peers but also across generations, within their communities.
Many youth-led organisations face systemic barriers to accessing funding, including eligibility restrictions, lack of operational support, and burdensome application processes. This disproportionately impacts marginalized youth—those whose voices are most needed in building inclusive peace and justice.
Establishing dedicated funding streams for youth-led and youth-centered movements that are multi-year and flexible can ensure increased accessibility for young people – particularly those from and operating in the most marginalised contexts. Additionally, developing a more accessible application process would further decrease barriers to funding – particularly given the volunteer-operated nature of many youth-led networks and organisations.
The Imperative of 2SLGBTQIA+ Inclusion in Canada’s YPS and WPS Agendas
The CCYPS underscores that members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community encounter unique challenges in peace and security contexts. These challenges include systemic discrimination, targeted violence, and exclusion from decision-making processes. Notably, current global YPS resolutions lack explicit references to 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, and only a few NAPs acknowledge their specific needs.
To address these gaps, networks and organisations such as the CCYPS advocate for a “Queering” of peace and security frameworks, ensuring that the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals are recognized and integrated. ‘Queering’ peace and security (QPS) is a term that was developed in the WPS space to recognize that homophobic and trans-phobic violence are felt in unique ways in conflict zones but often ignored in the international peace and security space community due to its heteronormative frameworks. It advocates for specific policies that promote 2SLGBTQIA+ voices in peace work and dismantle restrictive gender norms.
Aligning this with the five pillars of the YPS agenda – participation, protection, prevention, partnerships, and disengagement and reintegration – queering not only the YPS agenda but the WPS agenda as well can create more inclusive and sustainable domestic and international peace and security methods. Furthermore, it enables YPS and WPS frameworks to more effectively and meaningfully address diverse perspectives and needs. This is important not only in localizing the agenda, but in making Canada a leader in 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion in peace and security on the global stage. Without protecting and uplifting young 2SLGBTQIA+ people in Canada, this cannot be achieved.
Conclusion
The welcoming of a new federal government is a watershed moment for Canada’s engagement with its young people. Through more explicit implementation of the YPS agenda, Prime Minister Carney and his government can recognize young people not only as future leaders but as current changemakers whose voices, visions, and lived experiences are essential to Canadian society. We have outlined three focal areas, which we believe are accessible and tangible areas where the government can make changes to support meaningful youth involvement. In recognition of how young people in Canada are vulnerable to certain forms of insecurity, yet also do important work to combat the vulnerabilities faced by them and those around them, it is time that Canada took YPS seriously as both an international and domestic policy priority.
The views in this blog are those of the authors only and do not necessarily represent those of the WPSN-C or its membership.
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