Tuwilica Kahuika
The youth panel, on the recently concluded Nordic-Africa foreign ministers’ meeting (NAFM 2022) in Helsinki, Finland, favoured peace and security as the overall and most urgent matter affecting them, making specific reference to northern Africa, Ukraine and Mozambique.
The panel also advised the audience to more youth participation as a means to build and sustain peace.
The Finland Africa Strategy (FAS) emphasises that peace can only be sustainable if based on principles of human rights, democracy, rule of law and gender equality and, therefore, supports “actors promoting human rights, democracy and good governance”.
Thus, the FAS policy document, in particular, is concerned about the infiltration of international terrorism into new areas of Africa like Mozambique and the threat it has on regional and international security.
Consequently, by supporting security in Africa, FAS will also strengthen its security.
Additionally, the youth panel challenged the ministers on issues of migration in the context of freedom of mobility.
For them, people migrate for various reasons; as a result, freedom of mobility should be understood from a perspective of the reasons for migration to avoid situations where people die on a boat while fleeing their home country for safety, for instance.
Inge Kalumbu-Lapp from Namibia, a member of the African diaspora in Finland, said during a sideline interview that they made it clear to the Nordic ministers to “revisit their policies” to address the “reasons why migration and immigration issues are increasing daily” and questioned the basis of multi and bilateral agreements.
Kalumbu-Lapp specifically referred to the Finnish Language Policy, suggesting it needs modification to allow all citizens equal rights, “Africans are not just good enough for cleaning jobs”, though she understands that the Finnish language is put first, it is “very sad because it’s not like we can’t speak English”.
The deputy director general in the department for Africa and the Middle East in the ministry of foreign affairs in Finland, Claus Lindroos, agreed that though in the beginning FAS was based on development and donorship only, a transition to a more inclusive and participatory development approach is taken in the current strategy.
Lindroos said, “dialogue is important in development cooperation”, where “Africa can express their challenges” – and one way this can be achieved is for Finland to be an “active listener”, where “people to people contact is important”.
Members of the NAFM 2022 Youth Panel consisted of Kalumbu-Lapp, an independent member of the African diaspora in Finland; Wamweni Samudengu, Lead of Youth Engagement in Africa at the African Union; Akseli Rouvari, Finnish Youth Climate Delegate and Lilli Somero, a member of the Youth Peace Ambassadors, founded by CMI-Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation.