Around 18 years ago the UN General assembly declared 12 August as “International Youth Day” with the intention of building a better world with and for youth.

UN has requested all member states to provide the facilities and resources for the youth. This year theme for the International Youth Day was “youth building peace”. On this occasion Salaam Global Foundation held a meeting with presence of youth activists, scholars and thinkers.

In the beginning Dr. Mohammad Hosseini Manesh, Member of SGF BOT greeted the participants and introduced the program. Then Mr. Hamizdreza Haddadi, Vice-Chair of SGF Youth Committee presented the committee activities briefly.

After that the Panel on Youth, Dialogue and Peace started. Yasser Salimi, Chairman of SGF Youth Committee as chair of panel introduced panelists and asked Dr. Mazinani to deliver his speech.

Emphasizing on the importance of peace for everyone in the world, Ali Akbar Taj Mazinani the dean of social sciences Faculty of Allame Tabatabayi University said:” the Middle East is ravaged by war and radicalism and what we need more than anything else is peace.”

He pointed to the foreign and domestic treats which have inflicted Iran and added:”some of these treats are apparent and some are potential and we should not wait for the covert dangers to happen.”

He added:” we always witness that the youth are radicalized or influenced by it. He continued:” radical groups exploit the youth and majority of those who lose their lives are the youth while they can be leaders of peace.

Criticizing the political view on youth, the social science scholar added:” to understand the youth better, politico-cultural approach should be taken.” Regarding the meaning of peace he added:” there are two approaches to peace: negative and positive. Negative peace means absence of war and violence while positive peace emphasizes on absence of conditions leading to violence.

He added: In this approach to peace, justice, sexual equality, equal employment opportunities and decrease of corruption in society are main factors and their absence will tarnish peace and lead to violence.

In explaining social justice he said: social policy in fields of education, health, housing and welfare will lead to social justice and will make social security in people minds, in such societies people will trust official entities.

Pointing to spread of violence in Middle East he said: many of terrorists in the region are recruited by extremists groups due to lack of jobs.

Mazinani considered lack of criminal justice system as a reason for tarnishing peace and emergence of violence and said: we witness that prison as leading to extremism.

The university professor said youth role should be considered in social policy and added: concept of peace is absent in our policy making, in our country we need peace commanders in addition to war commanders since changing Iran image in international community is youth job and we should consider it in our public diplomacy too.

Criticizing education system as bases on memorizing he said: we should teach dialogue skills, problem solving, conflict resolution, mediation and communication skills since they are learnable. We need social approach to peace in our country to prevent violence.

The next speaker was Mohammad Nazifi, Head of Omid Iranian Foundation Youth Branch. He criticized mobilizing youth only for special occasions like elections but their capabilities should be used all the time. Youth demands are not limited to them and not meeting them will affect whole country negatively.

He added: Although there is little attention from policymakers to youth in national arena, we witness youth dominance in economic fields. Although there is no index for youth and we cannot talk scientifically on this issue, some of youth behaviors are shocking for politicians.

Last speaker Yalda Kkosravi, Head of Peace Studies Group in Tehran Peace Museum added to international documents on youth and said there is no special age defined for youth and added: each group of youth like young girls or disabled youth have special need which should be considered.

She said concepts of participation, development and peace are considered on different international documents and added: what leads to peace in communities is harmony and we should consider that absence of violence is not peace.

She said: teaching peace could not be one way and people should be engaged in learning. Learning should be driven from peace and volunteering is a way for engaging people but unfortunately it is not taken serious in our country.

She explained Peace Museum in engaging volunteers and emphasized on intergenerational relations to reach social policy goals.