BACKGROUND
The European Union (EU) and the Government of Nigeria (GoN) have entrusted the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with the implementation of the project, STRIVE Juvenile: Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Children by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups. As part of these efforts, the STRIVE Juvenile project is launching a youth-led Awareness Raising Campaign in Nigeria, which aims to fuel community acceptance and contribute to reducing stigmatisation of reintegrated children in some targeted local government areas of Borno state, thereby contributing to overall reconciliation. It will also support the prevention of recruitment of vulnerable children and re-recruitment of those that have already been reintegrated into the communities, by building the resilience of key stakeholders, including youth groups, children, traditional leaders, religious leaders, women’s groups, people with disabilities (PWDs), Almajiri(Traditional Qur’anic students), government within Maiduguri Metropolitan Council and Jere Local Government Areas, state and federal authorities.
TRAINING FOR YOUTH PEACE CHAMPIONS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS
It is necessary to build the capacities of young people in the state so that they can contribute to the peacebuilding process as agents ofchange, buthaving access toappropriate trainingand to authoritative information is difficult especially due to social status. The awareness raising component of the STRIVE juvenile project will therefore providetraining for young people on the appropriate use of social media, specifically on fact checking, to enable them to verify information that is misleading around the reintegration of children and/or news that will hinder the peaceful coexistence of people. Further training will allow the young people in the state to create content on digital and social media to effectively promote peace and the acceptance of children previously associated with terrorist and criminal groups in the affected communities.The training will give the participants the necessary skills to design animated peace content, which will be printed and used as an animated book resource for awareness creation.
