Emma is a peace activist and coordinator at IPB Youth Network, the youth network associated to International Peace Bureau (IPB). We spoke to her during her vistit to IPB World Peace Congress 2021 in Barcelona.
You can see the full interview in this YouTube link.
How did you get into activism?
I got into activism through a little bit at a time, actually. I don’t come from an activist background or anything but after I did my undergraduate I went and studied Conflict Resolution for my Masters and obviously it was focusing on lots of thing wrong with the world. And one of the first key things I did after the Masters was come out here, for the first World Congress in Berlin where we founded the Youth Network. So that was one of the first, sort of, big things I did to get involved in activism.
Ans now you are a coordinator at IPB Youth Network. Could you tell us more about what you do?
IPB Youth Network is a voluntary organization associated with the International Peace Bureau (IPB). It was founded in 2016 by the youth attendees at the Congress then. Partly because there wasn’t much engagement with youth then and we wanted to say that there needed to be more, we are here, we are interested, we are engaged, how can we work together more. And it grew out of that a lot. And they’ve taken that challenge and run with it. There is so much engagement with youth in this [Barcelona 2021] Congress.
What we’ve been doing in the intervening year is sort of bringing people together from around the world, building ideas of peace and connecting young peace activists to do the work that they are already doing around the world, but connected with other doing similar things.
How has the role of youth in activism and fights for rights changed over the years?
The role of youth now is actually quite similar to what it has been all the way through. You can trace youth activism all the way through the 2oth century and one of the things is really key is making it clear that the people on the frontlines calling for peace, calling for justice, are quite often young people who go: You know what, the world doesn’t have to be this way. So yeah, we have seen it around the world in so many occasions when young people have gone this does not have to be how the world is. Protests against the Vietnam war in the US, Greenham Common in the UK, lots of the activism against the dictatorship in Argentina a by younger people and all through history we can see that young people go out and fight for justice.
Really often when we look at conflict, we talk about how young people are, especially young men, are a threat. Too many young men in a society, who don’t have occupation, there is something dangerous, something that is more likely to drive conflict. And I think while that is true in many situations, it is also young people who can provide the opposite. Who can provide a new way of approaching, saying this is not okay and let’s look for something different and better. So that threat can also be an opportunity and something that should be mobilised for good.
Do you think that, politically, the views of youth are now taken more into account?
I think yes, in a sense, we have governments now listening to youth more. i think Greta Thunberg has done amazing things with Fridays for Future, the Extinction Rebellion people going out and saying this is not the way we want the world to be and we need to act now, it’s our future, why aren’t you protecting it? That is great. I also think that quite possibly the impact of the pandemic pushing everyone online has meant that the spaces that youth have taken and run with are the online spaces of activism. And now that everyone is living online a lot more than we used to, even older generations, that has brought the 2 together in different ways. i don’t know how that is going to play out yet, but there is quite a lot of interesting possibilities there in terms of bringing what youth are saying out of a side space into the mainstream. Or the mainstream looking at what youth is saying in a more meaningful way.
This Congress’ theme is “Reimagining our future”. How does a desirable future look like?
I think when I imagine a better future, the world I want to see, is one where everybody’s value is recognized and treated as equal. So, we live in an unequal world where because of where one is born, that means you are treated with a different level of value, given a different level of opportunity. And if I could reimagine our world, it would be one where that intrinsic, basic value of every single person is protected and supported.