Youth, Conflict, and Transformation: A Conversation with Johanna-Maria Hülzer

At the British Institute of Global Affairs, we believe it is essential not only to understand the role of governments and international organisations in peacebuilding, but also to recognise the often-underappreciated contributions of NGOs. Much of the world’s peace work is carried out by non-governmental organisations that maintain deep local trust and long-term presence in conflict-affected communities.

Through my internship with the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO), I have witnessed first-hand how pivotal NGO expertise is. With UN DPO, I got to work with the Berghof Foundation on a joint project exploring the political transformation of non-state armed groups. The project starts from the recognition that many armed groups pursue armed struggle because of political grievances and therefore Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) processes should respond to that. Together, the Berghof Foundation and UN DPO provide guidance for planning, designing, and implementing DDR processes that help transform armed groups into peaceful political actors.

Having worked together with Johanna-Maria Hülzer on this project, I felt she would be the ideal person to bring an NGO perspective into our YPS series. Johanna’s career path – completing her master’s degree at the Hertie School in 2021 and now working in Berghof’s Conflict Transformation Research department – reflects the pathways many young people would like to pursue into peacebuilding today. She sits right at the intersection of conflict transformation research and practice. What follows is a conversation that weaves together her experiences entering the field, as well as her insights on youth inclusion, gender, violent extremism, armed groups, and the wider challenges facing peacebuilding today.

About Johanna: entering the field of conflict transformation

Johanna did not set out to work in peacebuilding. Her path into the field emerged gradually, shaped less by a predetermined plan and more by the accumulation of experiences that exposed her to the complexities of conflict, identity, and statehood. With a background in political science, sociology, and international affairs; her first real encounter with peace and conflicts came through internships in Lebanon.

‘When I lived in Lebanon, I realised for the first time, having grown up in Germany, how the reality of living in a state is so different from what we, from a European perspective, think it should be or is like’, she reflects. It was this exposure to hybrid forms of living together under ‘a state’, overlapping identities, and non-state authority structures that sparked her interest in non-state actors and armed groups. Learning more about how peace processes transform the social contract and power dynamics would eventually lead her to the Berghof Foundation.

After joining the Berghof team as an intern, she eventually moved into a permanent position. ‘I was already placed in the research department, which is still where I work. I just stayed’, she says. Reflecting on how young people can enter the peacebuilding field, she also stresses the importance of these early entry points. ‘If you can get an internship or student assistant role, that’s often the easiest segue to remain in the field after your studies end’. It is this early exposure that builds networks and opens doors that would otherwise remain closed to many young people hoping to enter the sector.

The work of the Berghof Foundation

The Berghof Foundation is an independent, non-governmental, and non-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1971 by Georg Zundel. From its Cold War origins, when it focused on questions of nuclear risk and conflict, Berghof has evolved into a global actor supporting people in conflict in their efforts to prevent political and social violence and achieve sustainable peace through conflict transformation. The organisation describes its mission simply: ‘To create space for conflict transformation’.

Today its work spans three interrelated fields:

Practice / Peace Support: teams with country- or region-specific expertise work directly in conflict-affected contexts to support dialogue, mediation, and negotiation processes with both state and non-state actors.
Learning and Peace Education: developing curricula and tools that help individuals and institutions acquire the knowledge and skills to reduce violence and transform conflicts, including through extensive work with schools and youth in Germany.
The Research Department: the branch where Johanna works, which bridges research on conflict dynamics and peace processes with practice all over the world.

This combination of research and practice, Johanna notes, is essential. Peace research cannot be detached from the realities and constraints of conflict-affected societies, nor from the people who inhabit them.

Youth and Peacebuilding: Entry points and structural barriers

Moving to Johanna’s insights from her work, we asked her what the challenges and opportunities are that young people experience in the context of peacebuilding. Her reflections highlight one overarching challenge: although youth are central to peace and conflict dynamics, the structures around them rarely allow them meaningful access to power.

‘Whether in armed groups or civilian politics, leadership structures tend to be dominated by older men’, she explains. This generational gatekeeping is even more pronounced for young women, who face gendered expectations layered on top of age hierarchies. ‘Even in Germany, it’s more difficult for young women to enter political parties or leadership roles’, she notes.

This exclusion pushes young people toward informal politics, such as protests, mobilisations, and digital activism, especially when formal political systems cannot absorb their claims. Johanna emphasises that peacebuilding programmes must take this seriously: if formal pathways are closed, reintegration or political transformation efforts will always fall short.

Gender, intersectionality, and vulnerability

We then shifted to a more specific question: how do gender and youth intersect in her research, particularly in her work on the Preventing and Addressing Violent Extremism through community resilience (PAVE) project? Here, Johanna highlighted how young women in conflict-affected environments often face a particular combination of isolation, limited mobility, and exposure to online narratives that shape their vulnerability differently from young men.

She recalled findings from a case study in Iraq, where young women in some municipalities had almost no opportunity to participate in public life. ‘They were inside the house all day, often spending hours on their phones’, she explains. This created a dangerous overlap: isolation, exposure to online propaganda, and an absence of real-life spaces for conversation, questioning, or resistance.

Johanna stresses, however, that vulnerability does not equate passivity. ‘Young women have agency and can be actors, but the structures around them often don’t allow that to be visible’. Recognising this is essential, as Johanna put it, young women are frequently ‘victimised’ in public narratives, while their active roles in community life, informal politics, or efforts to counter harmful ideologies go unacknowledged. Moreover, findings from the PAVE project underscored that in general, environments with higher degrees of gender equality and women’s participation were seen as more resilient to extremism. The lesson from PAVE is clear: prevention and resilience require offline spaces where girls and young women can gather, be heard, and build alternative narratives.

Young People in Armed Groups and Pathways Out of Violence

Building on the previous discussion, we asked Johanna specifically about young people in armed groups and how their pathways out of armed struggle differ from those of older members. Her answer underscores the importance of understanding youth not just as participants during conflict, but as individuals navigating deep structural inequalities post-conflict.

Despite making up a large proportion of armed fighters globally, young people remain peripheral in peace processes. They are rarely included in negotiations, leadership roles, or post-conflict political systems. This disconnect reflects a persistent blind spot: peacebuilding expects youth to disengage from violence, but does not create realistic avenues for them to engage politically afterward.

Additionally, young people face very distinct psychosocial and developmental needs in conflict transformation. Many young people join armed groups – voluntarily or forcibly – before having access to education, employment, or formal political channels. Their formative years are shaped inside armed structures, leaving them with psychosocial and developmental needs that differ from older generations’ needs. She emphasises that reintegration programmes often fail to account for this, which inhibits young people’s potential for agency post-conflict.

For any reintegration and political transformation effort to be effective, it must be recognised that there is a large discrepancy between the central role young people play in armed groups and the peripheral role they play in formal peacebuilding efforts. Durable peace entails recognising the roles young people can and do play in conflicts, and encouraging youth leadership in the building of lasting peace and security post-conflict.

Intergenerational Dynamics

As the discussion turned from youth in armed groups to their political futures, Johanna emphasised a theme that cuts across all her work: intergenerational dynamics are fundamental to how peacebuilding succeeds or fails. The experiences, expectations, and political imaginations of younger and older generations often diverge sharply, shaped by different relationships to conflict, technology, authority, and lived memory.

Johanna noted that this gap is especially visible in contexts undergoing rapid social and technological change. Younger people tend to be more digitally literate and better equipped to navigate misinformation, while older generations, accustomed to consuming verified information through trusted institutions, may be more vulnerable to manipulation. These differences affect how each generation interprets political narratives, legitimacy, and the claims of armed or former armed groups.

This makes intergenerational dialogue more than a nice-to-have. ‘If we want young people to have meaningful agency after disarmament, we need to work not only with them but also with the gatekeepers’, Johanna stressed. Including elders, commanders, and political leaders in these conversations is essential to shifting entrenched hierarchies and reducing resistance to youth participation. Berghof’s intergenerational dialogue project demonstrates what this can look like in practice. Johanna described an initiative in the Philippines bringing together women formerly associated with armed groups and their daughters, creating a space where distinct generational experiences could be shared and understood. Projects like this reveal how deliberately structured encounters can bridge divides that otherwise remain closed and unspoken.

Importantly, Johanna also highlighted an underappreciated challenge: in former independence or autonomy movements, the ability of a political project to survive often depends on engaging younger generations who no longer share the same lived experience of conflict. As life improves after peace agreements, younger people may not feel the urgency or emotional resonance that fuelled earlier mobilisations. Former armed movements, she noted, ‘struggle to cultivate a new generation that sees their cause as their own’.

This insight links directly back to the need for intergenerational exchange: it is not only about inclusion in peace processes but also about how political movements evolve, adapt, and maintain coherence across time. Together, these dynamics reveal the links between youth engagement and intergenerational understanding. Peacebuilding really depends on transforming the relationships, expectations, and power structures that connect young people to the generations above.

To conclude, what should countries like the UK do?

Asked what states, including the UK, can do to support youth engagement in peacebuilding, Hülzer is clear about the structural issues:

Acknowledge and address power dynamics.

Peacebuilding programmes often avoid naming power structures because it is politically sensitive. But without this, youth inclusion becomes symbolic.

Work with gatekeepers as well as youth.

Real inclusion requires bringing elders, leaders, and power-holders into the process.

Integrate mental and psychosocial support throughout programmes.

Not as an optional add-on, but as an essential component, tailored to youth and intersectional identities.

Reform funding models.

Short project cycles, rigid budgets, and bureaucratic restrictions make it difficult for NGOs to deliver the long-term, adaptive work peacebuilding requires. ‘Everyone knows peace work is long-term’, she notes, ‘but funding structures still expect short-term results’.

Create more intergenerational and cross-societal spaces.

Not only in conflict-affected regions but also in Western societies struggling with generational splits.

Johanna’s insights show that peacebuilding efforts still grapple with the structural exclusion of youth, young women, and others who sit outside established political hierarchies. Whether discussing reintegration, violent extremism, or political transformation, she highlights the importance of addressing these power dynamics, supporting psychosocial needs, and creating meaningful intergenerational dialogue. Her insights remind us that youth inclusion is not a technical add-on, but a fundamental condition for building peace that lasts.

About the Author

Britt Flanderijn is a Dutch national specialising in international security. She holds a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bath and an MSc in International Relations (Research) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her professional experience spans the UK House of Lords, where she supported the Office of Lord Storey on youth unemployment initiatives in partnership with Career Connect; the EU Delegation in Vienna to the International Organisations, working on IAEA matters related to nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear security; and, most recently, the United Nations in New York, focusing on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of armed groups in the Middle East and Africa. Find more about her work here.