Youth-Led Solutions for a Just Future: Social Inclusion and Peace through Youth’s Action at the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2)

“We care. We care about our planet, our prosperity, and our people. We are informed, engaged, and deeply committed. We question systems not to disrupt, but to improve. We are the caretakers of tomorrow’s world—and if we want systems that future generations will uphold, we must co-create them today.”

With these powerful words, the Beyond Lab’s Kristin Faessen brought the session Youth-Led Solutions for a Just Future: Social Inclusion and Peace through Youth’s Action to a stirring close at the Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) in Doha, on November 6^th, 2025.

Co-organized by Beyond Lab, UNRISD, and the Government of Botswana, and co-moderated by the Beyond Lab’s Davide Fanciulli and UNRISD’s Yuyu Chen, the event spotlighted two key initiatives walking the talk on meaningful youth engagement, UNRISD’s “International Forum We, the Youth (IFWY)” and the Beyond Lab’s “The Beyonds Challenge”. The event flipped the script on traditional policymaking. Instead of asking what youth need, it asked: what are youth already doing to build a just future—and how can we scale it?

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‍Youth-Led Solutions for a Just Future: A Story of Action, Inclusion, and Bold Imagination

The event’s core message was clear: youth are not risks to be managed—they are bridgebuilders, innovators, and peace architects. Across regions, they are mediating disputes, countering misinformation, and designing inclusive policies. However, structural challenges persist, including under-financing and limited institutional access to decision-making.

The session opened with the presentation of the findings from UNRISD’s “International Forum We, the Youth (IFWY)” and related regional dialogues. Delegates from Asia, Europe, North America, and beyond shared stories of resilience and creativity, and concrete youth-led proposals for real-world impact, from restorative justice platforms to digital tools for early warning and cohesion. Such proposals aimed at stress-testing three main aspects, in alignment with WSSD2:

• community level peace infrastructure (dialogue platforms, restorative practices, psychosocial healing);
• conflict sensitive social policy and services (education, social protection, urban safety), and
• digital pathways for cohesion (mis/disinformation response, participation, early warning).

From Dialogue to Action: Youth as Co-Architects of the Beyonds

Crafting inclusive, participatory, and intergenerationally equitable futures is not an easy task. It requires courage, creativity, and constructive hope. It also requires the existence of spaces and initiatives opening the doors for priorities of young generations to be meaningfully heard and plugged into decision-making processes. This is precisely the rational behind the Beyonds Challenge, a global call for youth-led solutions that rethink sustainability, justice, and inclusion beyond 2030. The Challenge has been designed by the Beyond Lab with the support of IISD and the German Government, and its preliminary findings have been presented by Beyond Lab’s Davide Fanciulli throughout the second section of the event.

The Challenge received submissions from across continents—Pakistan to Brazil, Nigeria to Switzerland. But what stood out wasn’t just the diversity of geography—it was the depth of thinking. The preliminary analysis of these submissions highlights in fact several core, cross-cutting priorities of youth for sustainable and equitable futures:

• Regeneration and Environmental Justice: Environmental protection and regeneration emerged as the most prominent themes, consistently intersecting with governance, food systems, health, and community resilience. Participants naturally approach climate as a systems-level challenge.
• Intergenerational Impact and Responsibility: Sustainability was framed as an ethical obligation to future generations, linking ecological and financial debt to governance and justice. This creates a strong synergy between youth agency and ethical stewardship across time.
• Rethinking Development Metrics: Participants to the Challenge highlighted the needs and interests of future generations in designing measures of progress to complement and go beyond GDP - thereby “breaking the intergenerational glass ceiling” in economic discourse. This point was further stressed during the event by the remarks from the Lab’s Kristin Faessen, which stressed the need to rethinking our societal architectures around what we truly value and define as progress, giving young people a central role in defining it.
• Technology & Data Governance: Preliminary findings highlight disruptive technologies like AI and predictive systems as tools for resilience and disaster management. This strand of innovation complements traditional approaches like community action and regeneration, and is dependent on a regulated usage to turn liabilities into assets for the future.
• Positive and Hopeful Narratives: The need for hopeful and imaginative narratives clearly emerged as key to trigger action against withdrawal, frustration, and escapism, beyond crisis towards possibility.

The analysis also highlighted how youth naturally adopt systems thinking, weaving together climate, governance, and technology in their proposals. Their tone was action-oriented, pairing hope with practical solutions. Importantly, youth saw themselves not just as advocates, but as catalysts for regeneration and change.

Looking Ahead

The session concluded with a call to action: to scale youth-led solutions, embed youth voices in policy processes, and support cross-sectoral innovation. Initiatives such as the IFWY and the Beyonds Challenge offer concrete examples for how youth are already leading the way—thinking holistically, acting locally, and envisioning globally.

As we turn the commitments made during the summit into concrete actions, the Beyond Lab and its partners will continue to support youth leadership in shaping inclusive, equitable, and peaceful futures.