Democratic Engagement and Development in Cyprus
6 October
On September 13th, 2023, the Youth Fellows Federica Baggio, Rabia Turnbull, and Luca Guidoboni embarked on a project in the name of democracy and peacebuilding, bridging the divide in Nicosia, Cyprus. The initiative consisted of a participatory workshop hosted at the Ledra Palace in the United Nations’ buffer zone in cooperation with the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development (SeeD), the IMSISS Erasmus Mundus consortium, and the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP).
Young people often lack political recognition and representation, especially in conflict-affected areas. This is particularly evident in Cyprus: when Youth Fellow Luca Guidoboni ran the Open Chair Democracy Talks in April 2023, almost all respondents on both sides of Cyprus identified the lack of education and old-fashioned thinking as the main setbacks to democracy, mutual understanding, and conflict resolution. Furthermore, as emerging from specific and cross-sectoral studies, the “democratisation – youth engagement – peacebuilding” nexus should be explicitly incorporated into any political agenda addressing the Cypriot Question.
Overall, from the OCDTs’ results, it emerged that political disillusionment and social mistrust are widely common among the citizens of both sides of Cyprus. When attempting to engage with passersby, the most frequent reply was “I do not want to talk about democracy, I believe it is dead” or “useless”. Sometimes, this led to the completion of the 5-minute-long interview, outlining an evident discrepancy between strong hopes for the future and persistent disenchantment and frustration. Still, most of the interviewees welcomed the fact that a non-Cypriot, Greek, or Turkish person was running such a project, openly demonstrating trust towards someone external and neutral to the local political dynamics. This encouraged us to organise a participatory workshop and train other organisations in straight and effective modalities of democratic engagement to cultivate sociopolitical harmony while recognising and integrating our approach into the multiple peace initiatives organised in Cyprus.
Most importantly, recognising the many language barriers in Cyprus, our main practical goal was to transmit these mechanisms to local native speakers, with the hope of indirectly reaching out to those people who would not normally stop in the street and talk about democracy to a stranger or a foreigner. Moreover, filling this gap would make it possible to interact with young people, who often lack confidence and means of communicating in English but always demonstrate a strong desire to talk about the future of their communities in ways they had never experienced before (read, for example, our experience with Ukrainian youth in Eastern Ukraine in this article).
After ensuring SeeD and UNFICYP’s interest and supervision, in accordance with the precautions to be adopted in a conflict-affected scenario, we extended the invitation to the workshop to other Cypriot civil society and non-governmental organisations from both sides. Eventually, we hosted representatives from the following organisations:
Cyprus is composed of several communities that are all eager to play their role in societal development. Apart from Greek and Turkish Cypriots, participants also came from the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gaza (Palestine). The workshop, which lasted for two hours, was focused on the functioning of the instruments and activities designed by the IYTT to enhance democratic participation and foster youth empowerment. More specifically, these comprised of:
The “Democracy Speed Dating”, a specific adaptation of the OCDTs for events with 10-20 people, and
The “IYTT Proposal-Building Process”, a structured succession of personal and multi-level group reflections.
In the first exercise, the participants were asked to move around the room and ask, in pairs, the six questions for the OCDTs, the same as the campaign in April:
DEMOCRATIC ENGAGEMENT
What are the first 3 words that come to your mind when you think about Democracy?
Do you feel free when it comes to choosing your life’s path?
Do you feel like you have any power as a citizen?
What would need to change for you to be more powerful?
(CYPRUS-SPECIFIC)
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Do you feel that your concerns are considered in the management of the Cyprus problem?
What do you think is missing in the resolution of the Cyprus problem?
Apart from addressing common current challenges, this exercise was designed to demonstrate the simple efficacy of the questions in bringing an individual to critically examine their own conditions and perceptions. Moreover, it served the purpose of comparing the answers with those gathered randomly in the streets, highlighting the differences among respondents who are and are not involved in the sociopolitical and activist fields. Except for the increased technical precision around juridical, political, and economic issues, the participants agreed on the fact that the core feelings emerging from the OCDTs were the same.
Subsequently, we presented the participants with the Proposal-Building Process. They were asked to gather into smaller groups of 5 to 6 people and discuss in two separate sessions of 15-20 minutes, respectively:
The key and most pressing challenges that they experience at the moment or that they feel are addressing their communities the most, and
Potential solutions to said challenges.
Between the two sessions and afterwards, the groups convened together and shared the main concepts and ideas. This mechanism was developed in order to facilitate the conduct of the International Youth Conference every year, which results in practical proposals, all gathered in the Handbook for Innovative Democracy. Thus, by experiencing this exercise first-hand, the participants were shown how to potentially engage with other Cypriots to develop new proposals for local and inter-communal policies.
Accordingly, our aim was not to create a finite experience for the participants to talk about the Cypriot question but a safe space where they could express what concerned them and what the Cypriot political actors and other stakeholders could change and improve. Most importantly, by experiencing in first person the OCDTs and the IYTT Proposal-Building Process, we hope to have inspired the participants enough for them to run similar initiatives with their communities and in other areas of Cyprus, enacting the “train-the-trainer snowball effect”. In particular, with this small step, we aspire to have impacted the local realities and indirectly encouraged some Cypriot young people to pursue their dreams for a better Cyprus, a better Europe and Middle East, and a better world.
Luca Guidoboni, Rabia Turnbull & Federica Baggio
Youth Fellows
