From Kaduna to the UN: Youth Build a Global Movement From the Ground Up

January 2026 in West and Central Africa: Young peace-builders in Nigeria and the DRC turned local workshops into concrete demands for UN reform. Their message is simple—lasting peace requires democratic global governance, and the movement to build it starts in communities like theirs.

Kaduna: Peace Work Meets Charter Reform

In Kaduna, Nigeria, Children and Young People Living for Peace (CYPLP) partnered with Young World Federalists to host the "Young Peace-builders Dialogue Meeting" in January 2026. Organizers deliberately chose not to script the event. They let youth leaders speak from their own experience, trusting that raw, authentic voices would find their way to solutions.

Kennedy Karanja, chair of YWF East Africa, opened the session online. Then the floor took over. Participants connected dots between their daily reality—cross-border arms, climate shocks, misinformation—and the limits of a UN system designed in 1945. The conversation built momentum until someone named the tool that could change it: Article 109 of the UN Charter. By the end of the day, the group had drafted The Kaduna Declaration.

A Declaration That Names the Reform

The Kaduna Declaration doesn't ask politely for a better world. It makes specific demands:

• Invoke Article 109. UN Member States should convene a Charter Review Conference and create a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA)—a consultative body that represents people directly, with space to grow into real democratic power over time.
  

• Center youth in peace. Full implementation of UNSCR 2250 and the newly adopted UNSCR 2807 on Human Security, which recognizes youth as essential partners in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Fund locally led dialogue, early warning, and reintegration programs that actually reduce recruitment into violence.
  

• Protect digital rights. Stop internet shutdowns and unlawful surveillance. Require transparency for political ads, algorithms, and coordinated manipulation.
  

• Deliver climate justice. Fair global financing for adaptation and loss and damage, delivered with integrity and community consent. Treat climate impacts as conflict multipliers within peacebuilding strategies.
  

The Declaration refuses to split these issues apart. As the signatories write: "Democratic governance, human security, digital rights, and climate justice are not separate struggles—they are one fight for institutions that serve people".

You can read and sign the Kaduna Declaration now. Learn more about CYPLP at www.cyplp.net.ng.

Bukavu: Education as Youth Leadership

Days after Kaduna, across the continent in Bukavu, the Community Youth Network of Congo-DRC (RCJC-RDC) marked the International Day of Education with students at Institut Maranathan. The session's theme—"The power of youth in the co-creation of education"—challenged students to see themselves not as passive recipients but as architects of the system.

This wasn't abstract. Eastern DRC lives with insecurity, displacement, and resource conflicts. An education system that prepares young people to navigate those realities while claiming their voice in shaping solutions? That's peacebuilding.

RCJC-RDC has been building this approach since their November 2025 workshop at Panzi Youth Centre, where forty-one young people explored global citizenship education, and thirty-three decided to stay involved long-term. Now they're expanding that work into schools, connecting education reform to the broader movement for peace and democratic governance.

Why Article 109 Matters

Article 109 is the forgotten clause of the UN Charter. It allows member states to call a general conference to review the Charter if two-thirds of the General Assembly and nine Security Council members agree—and crucially, the veto doesn't apply to the decision to hold the conference.

When the Charter was adopted in 1945, President Truman said: "This Charter will be expanded and improved as time goes on. Changing world conditions will require readjustments". Eighty years later, those readjustments haven't happened. The Article 109 coalition—backed by more than 40 civil society organizations, former heads of state, and a million-dollar grant from Minderoo Foundation—is working to change that.

Young people in Kaduna just became part of that coalition. They're not asking for incremental tweaks. They're demanding a Charter Review Conference that can create a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and open the door to real democratic global governance.

Local Roots, Global Vision

This is how world federalism gets built. Not in conference halls or think tanks first, but in rooms where twenty-somethings in Kaduna describe how arms flow, and climate disasters cross borders faster than any national government can respond. In classrooms in Bukavu, students decide they're going to co-create the education system instead of waiting for someone else to fix it.

CYPLP and RCJC-RDC didn't start with the Kaduna Declaration. In August 2025, CYPLP ran its first workshop on global citizenship and democracy, using sticky notes and open questions to let participants define what these terms meant in their own words. In November, RCJC-RDC brought young people together at Panzi to connect global citizenship to the daily work of peace in a conflict-affected city.

January 2026 was the moment those conversations became a platform—a text that civil society, governments, and international organizations can endorse, and a campaign others can join.

Nigeria adopted a National Action Plan on UNSCR 2250 in November 2021, making it the first country in Africa and second globally to do so. Now Nigerian youth are connecting that national framework to a global movement for UN Charter reform. They're showing the rest of us what it looks like when youth peace and security work evolves into youth-led advocacy for a democratic world order.

Join the Movement

These workshops happened because YWF members fund youth-led organizing in places like Kaduna and Bukavu. Membership dues pay for venue hire, materials, follow-up with participants who want to stay active, and the slow, steady work of building movements from the ground up.

If you believe the foundation for a global movement starts in local communities—and that young people should lead it—here's what you can do:

• Sign the Kaduna Declaration and share it with your networks

• Join Young World Federalists to support more youth-led organizing for world federalism

• Learn about the Article 109 campaign and how your country can support a Charter Review Conference
  

From Kaduna to the UN, from Bukavu to your hometown, the movement for democratic global governance is being built one workshop, one declaration, one committed young organizer at a time.