Interfaith Dialogue on Violent Extremism (iDove) 1st Intercontinental Youth Forum (IYF) in Southeast Asia

“Young people can have a very important role in interfaith dialogue…they don’t care about social norms, they are just ready to go that extra mile.”

On December, 4-6 , 2019, around 22 selected young peacemakers from continent of Africa, Asia, Europe and US,  gathered in Jakarta for the first iDove Youth Forum in SE Asia. This was the second training to strengthen capacity among young people to understand violent extremism in their own context. By understanding the nature of violent extremism , we hope young peacemakers will take a lead in confronting or countering violent extremism by utilising peacebuilding tool. 

 The training was co-organized by The Network for and Religious Peacemakers Interfaith, Dialogue on Violent Extremism  (iDove),  the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ),  AMAN Indonesia,  Auc_cido . The training brought a theme on Understanding Violent Extremism: PVE in the context of Peace building in South East Asia. By bringing expert from different places of SEA, my self was able to share perspective gender on preventing violent extremism in the perspective of Indonesia. 

Unlike other training, in terms of program, participants could elaborate on the first hand experiences of expert to describe about violent extremism in the context of Middle East, The role of Women in Preventing Violent Extremism from Indonesia,  the youth and women movement described from African Union perspective. Learning from three countries, participants not only understood the dynamics of extremism, the enggement of women and children the great that gave a comprehensive picture on the dynamic of extremist group, the increasing number of women and youth engaging in this group because self identify crisis, lack of recognition, and lack of financial interest. 

Other uniqueness of this training was involving youth as facilitator of some sessions, after they got trained in Training of Trainer (ToT), so they had to facilitate their peer group. It was completely more dyanmics because the organizer did not focus on knowledge and experiences, but also self-development where youth took regular interactions with other youth thought game, role play, group discussion, etc. 

Listening their presentation on the root causes of vilent extremism during the training, brought me into some impression that young people are aware about violent extremism, and condition to condusives to radicalism and extremism, such as lack of trust, interaction among different groups, strong history of hatred in community, lack of recognition, unresolved conflict, lack of law enforcement, lack of good governance,  lack of gender maintreaming, etc. 

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