Mitigating the risk of insurgency through youth integration and development

Abstract

One of the key groups that are influenced by an armed conflict is young generation of any country.Thirty year armed conflict made a huge impact on the young generation in Sri Lanka.On the other hand, Sri Lanka’s rapidly aging population poses serious challenges on several fronts. Statistics show that Sri Lanka would have elderly population of about 3.6 million by 2021, which is 16.7% of the total population and by 2041, one-quarter of the population would be elderly. Hence, current youth population is the most precious resource of our nation.In this paper the projected socio-economic challenges of this demographic transition are highlighted and calling the attention of policy makers to secure current and future young population from the threat future insurgency.Though seven years have already passed from the outright military victory over the LTTE, still shadows of misunderstanding and discrimination among youth can be visible.Absence of conflict could not be defined as peace and it is a challenge to cooperate two separated ethnic groups nearly three decades.One of the main objectives of post war peace building and reconciliation process is to integrate and develop younger generation of the nation for peace and harmony. Currently, Sri Lanka has been facing several challenges such as aging population, high brain drain, slowness of youth integration And development process. Hence, the first aspect of this research is to study the existing process of youth integration and development in Sri Lanka.The second aspect is to build a conceptual framework to develop national policy in youth integration and development. This is to mitigate the risk of future insurgency which could occur due to the lack of socio-economic development,trust, harmony and a sense of belongingness. This study is to analyse the macro environment factors and peace triangle while using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse primary and secondary data were collected.