Youths are nowadays considered as one of the spearheads of the development and world peace in the future. Youths have adequate strong power in creating peace in the world. Youths, who always have creative thinking and innovation, are deemed having a big occasion to participate in world peace. However, many youths have not realized their strategic position yet. Thus, international forums to raise youths’ awareness of coining world peace begin being promoted. One of them is like International Young Leader Assembly.
In the 5th International Young Leader Assembly conducted in Bangkok, Thailand on from the 27th to the 31st of October 2014 with the theme of “Moral and Innovative Leadership: Service and Entrepreneurship”, youths as representatives across the world were together in an event initiated by Global Peace Foundation and Global Young Leader Academy. They got an enlightenment regarding opportunities of youths as world peace agents. It was summarized on Bangkok Statement officially announced by United Nations (UN) on the 28th of November 2014.
In this forum, 11 Indonesian youths participated as Indonesia representatives. These 11 youths were students from Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY), University of Indonesia (UI), Padjajaran University (Unpad) Bandung, Sepuluh November Institute of Technology (ITS) Surabaya, Manado State University, and National University of Jakarta. Besides these 11 students, there was a representative from People’s Representative Council (DPR) of RI.
Ahmad Jawwad and Fitri Navisah Fauziyah, as representatives of UMY, on Wednesday (26/11) explained that there were two main agendas they carried out on the forum. First, it was a discussion dealing with roles and potencies of youths in the world in efforts to create peace. Second, it was making Bangkok Statement containing points on how and what steps youths do to coin peace. “The first agenda was a discussion while having dinner in the house of the US Embassy to Thailand. We, youths of representatives across the world, discussed the position of youths which affected adequately. The foremost focus we took was about raising the awareness of youths that youths, in fact, have strong power to coin world peace in the future,” stated Jawwad.
The strong power, according to Jawwad, was like optimizing youths’ potency having many creative and innovative ideas. Moreover, they got involved in sustainable development of certain areas like services and care of environment, entrepreneurship from youths, carrying out interactive education and discussing good disaster management purely caused by natural disaster or human activities, establishing peace culture through cross cultural understanding, educating, and being aware and care about health of all, particularly youths, and volunteering and conducting cultural exchange with other countries to promote world peace and development.
“All of them were on the draft of Bangkok Statement. Furthermore, helping to create world peace, youths should have several major principles. It is getting involved in youth empowerment that can be carried out through social media which has been loved by youths. Others are cooperating with social institutes to research regarding the knowledge of youths toward social issues, enhancing volunteer capacity of youths in national and regional level, joining volunteer association of international multilateral, and getting involved in constructing aim scaffolding of sustainable development,” told the student of International Relations of UMY, who become Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN Youth Leader Association as well.
Jawwad added that the Bangkok Statement would be included in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015. SDGs 2015 is advanced agenda of MDGs (a program for world poverty alleviation). Nevertheless, SDGs tend to focus on the development agendas post 2015 to wider sustainable development. In this event, the youths as the representatives of their county also achieved a title of Global Ambassador.
