The Youth at the Table: What Cyprus's Technical Youth Committee Can Teach the Commonwealth About Peacebuilding

I was invited to join the Technical Committee on Youth, the first bicommunal committee of its kind in Cyprus. The members of the committee were selected by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities, and I was personally selected by His Excellency the President of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, in recognition of my peacebuilding efforts through my organisation, Fashion Heritage Network Cyprus, a bicommunal sustainable fashion organisation based in Nicosia. It is a responsibility I take seriously.

That was just over a year ago. The Technical Committee on Youth, or TCY, is the thirteenth bicommunal committee to operate under the UN Good Offices Mission, and the first new one created in more than a decade.

Cyprus has been a divided island since 1974. Many Greek Cypriots my age have never met a Turkish Cypriot, and the same is true in reverse. The purpose of the Technical Committee on Youth is simple: to bring young people from both communities together, beyond the borders that have kept us apart, so that we can focus on what we have in common rather than what divides us. It is about unity, peacebuilding, collaboration, and communication. In practical terms, it means building a generation that can bring peace closer to reality. We believe this generational work is instrumental to the island's future, and ultimately, we want a united European island.

Starting with honesty

When we first sat down together, nobody expected instant results. Decades of frozen negotiations had made both communities cautious of new initiatives. What made the Technical Committee on Youth different was a simple decision early on: to speak honestly with each other, in the room, rather than let unspoken frustrations build up. We stopped performing for each other and started actually talking.

That shift mattered more than any single policy we have written. Topics that had rarely been discussed openly between our two communities, about identity, about restricted movement, about opportunities missed over the years, were finally raised in a space built to hold them constructively. Trust, once we started building it, grew steadily.

From dialogue to delivery

We knew that goodwill alone would not be enough. Bicommunal initiatives on this island have a long history of producing good intentions without having an impact across the entire island. So we grounded our work in problems that young Cypriots actually face. We are developing an interactive digital platform, built with UN support, that will let citizens across the island send peacebuilding ideas directly to us. We have started laying the groundwork for joint health initiatives that treat wellbeing as something that should not stop at a checkpoint. We have also pushed for youth representation inside the island's other technical committees, on environment, heritage, and trade, so that our generation's voice reaches beyond this one room.

Environmental issues, in particular, have turned out to be a powerful starting point. Water scarcity, waste management, and other shared pressures affect both communities in the same way. When you are working on a policy for managing resources, it stops mattering which side of the island your data comes from.

The UN Secretary-General recently visited Cyprus and met with our committee. He showed great interest in our work, which was an important moment of recognition for everything we have built together. We are also pushing for dedicated youth spaces at buffer zone checkpoints, so that meeting regularly becomes easier rather than harder, and we are preparing to expand our environmental and public health initiatives across the whole island.

Brussels, and the case for taking us seriously

In June this year, our full bicommunal delegation travelled to Brussels at the invitation of Kaja Kallas, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. It was the first time a joint delegation of young Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots sat across the table from senior European leadership as stakeholders. We spent two hours explaining, clearly and directly, how political status restrictions limit Turkish Cypriot youth from taking part in international sport, from studying abroad, and from the rights their EU peers take for granted. We also asked for practical measures to make trade and communication across the island easier. This visit was one of the most important moments for our committee to date.

Our message in Brussels was simple: youth issues should not wait until after a political settlement is signed. They are part of building that settlement in the first place.

Why this belongs in a Commonwealth conversation

I am writing this as an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society because I believe the work of the Technical Committee on Youth matters beyond Cyprus. The Commonwealth includes many societies shaped by division or a difficult shared history, where formal political talks have stalled for years, sometimes generations. What we have learned here is that youth-led, practical dialogue can build momentum where formal negotiations struggle to. It does not replace high-level diplomacy. It builds the trust that high-level diplomacy needs in order to succeed.

We are a generation that grew up on a divided island, and yet we are choosing, together, to build something new: real friendships between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, real cooperation on the issues that affect us all, and a genuine belief that peace is possible in our lifetime. That is the work of the Technical Committee on Youth, and it is why I believe our example has something valuable to offer the wider Commonwealth family.

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The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Royal Commonwealth Society.