International conference: Speakers call for engaging youth into political life

Youth today prefers to participate in politics in non-traditional ways, says scholar.


News Desk March 31, 2015
The conference was jointly organised by the Department of Sociology, Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), in collaboration with Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF). STOCK IMAGE

Social scientists, policymakers, politicians and students unanimously stressed the need for adopting substantial measures to engage youth into the national life.

They were speaking at a two-day international conference on “Youth wings among political parties: A comparative analysis of Germany and Pakistan” that concluded here on Tuesday, said a press release.

The conference was jointly organised by the Department of Sociology, Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), in collaboration with Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) with an aim to understanding and analysing youth participation in political activism.

Dr Mehtab Karim, George Mason University, USA, in his presentation briefed the audience about the attitudes and perception of youth and their views on political parties.

He said that Pakistan’s population was one of the youngest in Asia. About 65 per cent of the population was below the age of 30, and those between the ages 15-29 (defined as youth or young adults) constituted about 30 per cent of the population.

Dr Karim said that due to high birth rate and limited employment opportunities, many young people had been moving from villages to cities in search of employment.

Their attitudes and behaviour is affected by the situation they face. This combination of national demographic trends and movement of youth to the cities often creates an urban youth surge of considerable magnitude, he added.

Nizar Ahmad, lecturer at Sociology Department, University of Kohat said that most peace activists were members of student political wings and had worked with peace-building organisations where they gained capacity in conflict resolution and management.

He was of the view that the youth was an asset of the political parties that needed to be trained in promotion of a culture of peace in crisis zones. He said that youth peace builders were very limited in number and organisations working for peace, political parties as well as government were required to facilitate such young activists so that they might perform better.

Prof Dr Masooda Bano, Associate Professor at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford also shared her research work with the participants. She said that Pakistan as in case of many other developing countries was facing a youth bulge.

She said that evidence from across the world suggested that the youth of today were not disengaged from politics, but many preferred to participate in politics in non-traditional ways.

Rather than participating in formal political parties, youth are trying to find alternative spaces to express a new agenda of reforms.

Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, MNA from Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Nadia Chaudhry from Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Dr Sajid Mehmood Awan, Dr Inam Laghari and Dr Muhammad Zaman (QAU), Dr David Jones from Canada, Dr Saima Sheikh, Dr Kalimullah (University of Balochistan), and Dr Almut Besold, FNF country representative also addressed the conference.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1st, 2015.

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