Mediothek Herat Organized a one-day youth dialogue forum on 11, 02, 2021 in Herat provincial capital. More than 55 participants, both young men and women, young peace activists, representatives of youth networks and groups, university students and members of Mediothek Youth Network participated in the event. Additionally the one-day dialogue on “The Importance of Youth Cohesion and Participation in the Peace Process” was attended Ms. Munsa Hassanzadeh, deputy provincial governor on social affairs, Arya Raufian, head of information and culture and youth affairs department and Professor Nikjoo, president of Herat University Peace Studies Center who addressed the participants at the opening part of the event.
“Mediothek Afghanistan in collaboration with the Deputy Ministry of Youth Affairs is set to organize a set of youth and peace dialogues across a dozen provinces throughout the country and today we are attending one of the those event here in Herat province,” said Hamid Sarfarazi, Mediothek Coordinator in Herat during his opening remarks.
“I praise the organizer of this event,” said the deputy governor “and urge the young participants to make most out of this dialogue forum today, peace is not possible in the country without your meaningful participation and engagement and you cannot have meaningful participation without meaningful mobilization, training and communication and such platforms provide great opportunities for communication for a large number of young people.”
Praising Mediothek’s focus and work for youth in the county for so many year, Arya Raufian said that “Peace is a complex and multidimensional concept. The end of war is not the beginning of peace. The peace process is long and comprehensive. Ensuring justice, structural transparency, accountability, economic development and reducing social distrust are the prerequisites for sustainable peace and no other segment of society can do what youth can for a sustainable peace.”
“I learned many topics from the guest-speaker and from the discussions and group work among participants,” says Behrad Nikzad, a young participant of the dialogue forum, “and these lessons had a great impact on creating inner peace in me, and I can definitely say that this dialogue is the beginning of institutionalizing peace in society for me.”
The second part of the dialogue forum provided ample time and space for the participants to engage and in meaningful and practical discussions, work in several working groups to analyze numerous pressing topics of concern regarding peace and youth and finally shared the result of their working groups with each other for further discussion. Participants filled in a comprehensive questionnaire for future assessment and monitoring.
Karimeh Habibi, a participant, believes such event are very useful in mobilizing youth for building peace “in this program, I got to know the views of young people from different cultural and social backgrounds. It was a good opportunity to exchange views and understand different views. At the same time, I felt involved in making decisions, which was a good feeling.”
Negin Majidi, states that the program was a good opportunity to document the views of young people and partner with decision makers. She thanks the Mediothek Afghanistan and the Deputy Ministery of Youth for organizing the event.
The provincial dialogue forum is part of the project “Youth as Multipliers for Peace – Mobilization for and Participation in the Peace Process in Afghan Provinces”, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
