Global Initiative on Decent Work for Youth
Promoting Decent Employment for African Youth as a Peacebuilding Strategy
This paper, developed in the frame of the ‘Boosting decent employment for Africa’s youth’ partnership between INCLUDE, IDRC and the ILO, under the umbrella of the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, is part of a series of evidence synthesis papers that take stock of existing evidence on themes relevant to the youth employment debate.
Programmes do not happen in sterile lab conditions: they become strongly intertwined with the local political economy context. Who gets which jobs, and how, is just as important, from a peacebuilding perspective, than the overall quantity of jobs created. The paper therefore sets out to address two main research questions:
1. How does the quality of work play out in the employment/peacebuilding connection?
2. Can a focus on decent work strengthen the impact of youth employment programmes on peacebuilding?
Programmes do not happen in sterile lab conditions: they become strongly intertwined with the local political economy context. Who gets which jobs, and how, is just as important, from a peacebuilding perspective, than the overall quantity of jobs created. The paper therefore sets out to address two main research questions:
1. How does the quality of work play out in the employment/peacebuilding connection?
2. Can a focus on decent work strengthen the impact of youth employment programmes on peacebuilding?