The Third Youth Land Governance Conference is an international event themed: “Youth Access to Land for Peace and Security in Africa. The conference aims to build and enhance youth capacities towards embracing best practices regarding accessing land for food production, contributing to the mitigation of the climate crisis, addressing social inequalities to foster peace and security and endorsing strategies for sustainable management of land in Africa. These conversations are geared towards contributing to the achievement of the SDGs and Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGTs); and are in line with the theme of the Year 2022 of the African Union, Strengthening Resilience in Nutrition and Food Security on The African Continent.
The conference is taking place at a time when every sector has been affected by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
It offers a golden opportunity to reflect and highlight the relevant role of youth for better security and peace in the future. It also provides a platform for pushing the frontiers of thought to deliberate on the challenges that youth face on land access and push this agenda to high-level discussions while ensuring that stakeholders and governments feel the urgency to act.
The Third International Youth Land Governance conference will focus on the following objectives, key to the delivery of Agenda 2063 of the African Union:
- Recognise youth as agents of change in matters of land rights, security and peace by different stakeholders;
- Encourage the governments, INGOs, NGOs, CSOs and other land governance actors to support land data collection and use
- Advocate for inclusion in the land sector
- Provide a platform to share youth involvement related good land practices
- Build youth capacity in using technology tools in land data collection (GPS, tablets)
- Explore the innovative approaches that the youth can use to advocate for security and peace through access to land
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
- Launch of a multi-sector, multi-stakeholder platform for youth access to land: Youth & Land Multi-Stakeholder Platform for Africa (YLMPA).
- Strengthened monitoring, evaluation and accountability framework to promote land rights towards attaining development, peace and security;
- To mobilise research-related training opportunities to increase the number of African young professionals in land governance, peace and security.
