AEGEE Youth & Globalisation Project Team in cooperation with AEGEE-Maastricht organized an International Youth conference, Youth on the Move: Let’s go global, from 5-8 April 2005, in Maastricht, for active youths from all over Europe with the support of the European Youth Foundation and the Council of Europe.

This is the third Youth & Globalisation conference of this year, where it seeks to promote youth progress and active citizenship within an ever-arching globalised world by gathering active youths from all over Europe. The Conference was based on a multitude of diverse activities, largely concentrating on having parallel workshop sessions, plenary debates and open forum discussions coupled with a series of Open Dialogues with Academics and Experts in the field, such as representatives of the European Center of Conflict Prevention and the University of Maastricht. This created an opportunity for the participants to voice the concerns on the major issues of this time: youth empowerment, peace & stability, international economic development and intercultural dialogue.

The first topic, Youth Empowerment, tackled the question of how to increase the power of youth, through the input of the workshop leader Sander Spek, the speakers, such as Jan Stok (Attac Netherlands), Maren Kraushaar (Amnesty International), Heidi Rehmann (Young European Federalists) and participants.

The Peace and Stability workshop, lead by the representatives of UNOY defined peace as being more than just the absence of violence. For there to be peace there must also be equality, development, justice, respect for basic rights, diversity and feelings for security. Peace is a dynamic process and the question is not if there always will be conflict, but how its be dealt with. To achieve this, (international) economic development is an essential part of it (the workshop lead by GYAN France representative), where a stable environment and education, trade and liberalisation are not only essential aspects, but also the respect of the rule of law. Intercultural Dialogue, (lead by Mimoun Boukiour) is an inadmissible aspect of this, where global problems should be tackled as well in the local level.

Transcending mere talk, the conference was targeted towards obtaining concrete, concise and sustainable results with the final production of an Action Paper, where it could provide the working strategies and necessary tools to be implemented by youth leaders in their own communities.

More information about this conference, as well as the Action paper and AEGEE Youth & Globalisation can be found on the website:

http://aegee.org/globalyouth/2004/index.htm

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