Youth as protagonists of their social environments

Any strategy related to youth must be underpinned by the conviction that they should be protagonists in the process of social change. For youth to realise this potential, other social actors they interact with need to see them in this light, and demonstrate their confidence that youth can arise as agents of change. Youth themselves also need to believe that this potential resides within them. 

However, the social forces that distort how youth see themselves are becoming stronger. Mounting global, national, and local challenges, and the divisive and antagonistic ways such challenges are often approached, can leave many youth feeling powerless in the face of what seem like insurmountable problems. 

And yet, at a time of life when young people wrestle with the fundamental questions of who they are, how they should relate to others, and what their place in the world is, they possess great capacity to reimagine themselves and their society. If adequately supported and encouraged, this natural capacity enables them to become active protagonists of change, not simply passive bystanders in a world being made for them. It is during this crucial moment in life, one of great opportunity and great challenge, that youth will require the wholehearted attention of European policymakers, so that they can help shape the progress of society. 

Broadening the role and purpose of education 

One of the most fundamental conditions for youth to realise their potential as protagonists of social progress is access to empowering educational processes. 

However, narrow conceptions of education and its purpose can limit a young person’s capacity to flourish, to make informed choices about the future, and to meaningfully contribute to society. Educational systems that reduce education to the assimilation of information or the acquisition of technical skills needed to compete in the labour market, conceptualise a young person’s learning trajectory as a ladder to climb at a faster pace than others, promoting harmful pressures and superficial incentives, and can stifle rather than cultivate a thirst for knowledge that propels a fulfilling educational journey. 

If youth are to be protagonists, education must inspire them to use their endowments not only for their own progress, but for the betterment of society as a whole. In this respect, education systems must cultivate the capacity to analyse one’s society—its needs and possibilities for progress—must nurture a sense of moral responsibility towards that society, and must assist young people to explore in both theory and practise how they can use the knowledge gained during their education to address these needs. In this way, young people can come to see engagement in meaningful work, for example, not merely through the lens of self-interest, but as a powerful means to serve society. 

Strengthening community life and intergenerational relationships 

Beyond educational settings, other social spaces in which youth are present have a significant, often overlooked, formative impact on them. A local community that connects diverse individuals and families in a reciprocal web of mutual support, trust, and solidarity, provides another environment in which youth can both develop the capabilities and qualities necessary to contribute to social progress, and at the same time receive support in facing the various struggles on the path to adulthood. 

Intergenerational relationships are a crucial component of community life. Older members of a community can provide advice and encouragement, while regarding youth as capable protagonists whose ideas are to be embraced with open-mindedness. Similarly, nurturing in youth responsibility for the social, intellectual, and moral development of generations younger than themselves, can strengthen their sense of agency and purpose, and inspire them to exemplify high ideals. In turn, the care youth extend to the next generation ensures that rising cohorts of children will have support as they pass through their own adolescent years. 

What this requires is a reimagining of the social relations at the heart of European society, and a collective process of learning on how local communities can be strengthened and the generational fragmentation of society be overcome. 

Fostering youth commitment towards all of humanity 

The many challenges facing humanity cannot be resolved without the understanding that humanity is one, and that the well-being of any segment of the global population is contingent upon the well-being of the whole. Therefore, every dimension of a European strategy for youth must give attention to nurturing conviction in humanity’s essential oneness. Without this, even well-intended efforts to empower youth will fall short of creating the conditions for effective cooperation at the local, national, and international levels that are crucial to addressing the many existential issues confronting humanity. 

Bringing diverse populations together 

Youth have an irreplaceable role to play in devising solutions to all of the challenges facing European society. There is, however, one challenge that warrants their special attention: that of ensuring that the European continent, blessed with cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity, becomes a place where youth and populations of various backgrounds feel they belong and can play a part in shaping its future. 

Youth must be at the vanguard of efforts to build a new set of relationships among diverse populations at the grassroots, grounded in the conviction of the oneness of humanity. Prejudice is perpetuated in social contexts in which individuals merely live side by side without opportunities for meaningful interaction. At the local level, youth can learn to bring diverse individuals together and engage in activities that contribute to the well-being of the entire village or neighbourhood. While youth possess great capacity to convene, they also require sustained encouragement from their communities and institutions, such as municipalities, community centres, and arts, leisure, and sports organisations. 

Participation in consequential decision-making processes 

Treating youth as meaningful protagonists of their social environments also requires their participation in processes and spaces through which consequential decisions are made, particularly those that shape policy. Fostering a culture in which youth feel that their voices are heard and their opinions valued will need to go beyond the establishment of formal mechanisms for youth participation. It will require cultivating a posture of openness and humility towards the creative and sometimes challenging insights that young people will bring to policy discussions. If youth are given such creative space, they will not only be able to contribute to existing policy processes, but can bring fresh ideas to help rethink and reshape current social structures. In this respect, young people should not be regarded merely as the inheritors of existing social systems. 

Youth and well-being 

Younger generations across Europe are experiencing increasing levels of loneliness, isolation, frustration, hopelessness, and lack of self-worth, giving rise to profound concern for their well-being. The relationships, environments, and purposeful contributions to society described above are essential to a young person’s true flourishing and well-being. However, the strength of the forces that breed passivity and distort young people’s sense of self-worth should not be underestimated. Entire industries, for example, are growing ever-more proficient at monopolising the attention and energy of young people with endless entertainment and distractions. 

There is a need to question this course that society has set itself on, and to reflect on the extent to which a young person’s development in today’s world is being compromised by unbridled access to destructive content, carried through the medium of technology. Focused attention is required, including by youth themselves, to the question of how systems for the promotion and regulation of media, technology, and culture can be reshaped towards socially constructive ends.

Mr. President,

Last week, in a heart-rending act, Iranian authorities leveled over 30 Bahá’í graves in Tehran. Not only plots of land—these were human beings, each with a lived story of tremendous suffering and persecution for their faith. Among them was an elderly woman whose husband was executed for being a Bahá’í, her sons banned from universities, also for their faith, and then both imprisoned for years, resulting in her raising their young children. When she died, her burial in the Bahá’í cemetery was refused. So, her family donated her body to science as an act of service to society. Cruelly, the hospital rejected her body, labeling it as “religiously unclean”. Persecution continued, when her body was then forcibly buried in a mass gravesite. And now, barely three months later, that site has been leveled.

Today, we ask the Iranian government, what threats do the dead pose to society? How do you justify your acts, in your conscience, knowing that even in death you do not leave Bahá’ís in peace, imposing brutality on them even in their grief? There is no religious or cultural norm that would ever support this kind of cruelty.

The Fact-Finding Mission, in its report, documented an increase in the persecution against religious minorities since last year’s uprising. The Bahá’í community, a long-suffering group, is one such example. We call for the extension of the mandate of the Fact-Finding Mission as it ensures accountability of Iran for its harrasment of the Bahá'ís and all others seeking equality.

The Baha’i International Community is profoundly concerned by a change in tactics in the Iranian government’s persecution of the Baha’i community—the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. Baha’is have been persecuted since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when more than 200 Baha’is were executed, and today are suppressed in all areas of life. But the changes in the Iranian government’s treatment of the Baha’is represents an escalation and intensification of its policy of systematic persecution against the community.

The following statement details a range of new and ever harsher methods the authorities are using to persecute the Baha’is. The methods include home raids and searches, arrests, trials, prison terms, land and property confiscations, hate speech, the denial of education, and the denial of burial rights and of basic citizenship rights.

The principal goal of these new tactics, the Baha’i International Community believes, is to sow fear and confusion, to disenfranchise and further impoverish Baha’is, to prolong the harassment of individuals, and to instill feelings of uncertainty and thus rob all Baha'is of peace and security in their daily lives.

Violent home raids, searches, and arrests

The past few months have witnessed several increasingly disturbing trends in the incidents of persecution of the Baha’is in Iran. A systematic program of home invasions and arrests has been unfolding in cities across the country, starting successively with Shiraz, then Yazd, Isfahan, and most recently in Hamedan, Karaj and Shirvan. Since the beginning of October, 40 Baha’is have been arrested and the homes of close to 100 families have been invaded and searched.

One of the most disturbing trends has been the violent and abusive treatment of the Baha’is by members of the security agencies undertaking searches and arrests, as well as the verbal and physical abuse being suffered by individuals under interrogation in detention centers.

In one city, for instance, when security agents invaded the home of a family, the young son objected to the disruptive search by the agents and their activities. The agents then severely beat the boy in front of his parents and his grandmother, who were powerless to intervene, leaving him handcuffed with bruising plastic ties and in pain. In another case, a mother of a young family arrived home after taking her child to school and noticed four men waiting in the alley. When the woman opened the door of her home, she was forcefully thrown inside by the four men, who followed without presenting a search warrant and proceeded to conduct a search of her home. And in a third instance, during a home raid, the father of the household suffered a heart attack as his daughter was taken to prison.

And in the most recent home invasions in Hamedan, armed and masked agents forcibly broke into the homes of 33 families, several of which housed elderly and infirm women in their 80s, including one suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and under the constant care of a nurse. When the nurse at first refused to open the door to the security agents, they retaliated by breaking windows and breaking down the door to enter. Agents abused and intimidated these elderly women and their families, searched and ransacked their homes, and in at least three cases this treatment resulted in hospitalization of the elderly as a result of trauma and stress. One of these women suffered a heart attack during the raid and required resuscitation. Armed agents also intimidated and threatened other homeowners at gunpoint.

The home invasions and searches have become extremely intrusive, resulting in the complete ransacking of homes; in some cases, agents have removed ceramic floor tiles, torn open furniture and have even destroyed musical instruments. In other cases, homes have been subjected to intrusive surveillance through the installation of surveillance cameras trained on the doors of the homes of Baha’i families, to monitor their activities and visitors.

Several of the households that experienced raids were then pressured by the Iranian authorities—which threatened them with serious additional repercussions should they disclose details of their experience to outside parties. Agents have also deleted smartphone videos, CCTV videos, and other records, in an effort to eliminate any evidence of their actions against the Baha’i community.

Throughout this recent upsurge in attacks on the Baha’is, more than two-thirds of those arrested and detained have been women, many of whom are in their twenties and thirties, and who have been forcibly separated from their young children. Many of the raids on families with young children occurred when the children were present—intensifying fear and panic within the families.

In one recent case, a young woman was arrested and jailed for five years merely for making enquiries with authorities about the burial of her grandmother—separating her for the next five years from her five-year old daughter. Another woman with two children was recently imprisoned for 10 years after spending a year in detention without trial.

Many of the arrested individuals have been detained without trial for extended periods, some in local prisons and others at specialized Ministry of Intelligence detention facilities. Several current cases have been in detention for periods of several months, and one for more than 247 days, each without trial and while being denied release on bail. The detainees are awaiting trials for “crimes” that the rest of the world would consider as providing community service.

False charges and severe prison terms

Long and unjust prison terms are being handed down by the courts for Baha’i individuals on trumped-up charges such as “membership of the deviant Baha’i sect” or the ridiculous charge of “social activities with the intention of propagating the heretical Baha'i sect.” Several Baha’is have been sentenced to long prison terms for their humanitarian assistance such as teaching homeless and underprivileged Iranian or Afghan children and for providing relief to earthquake victims. The Iranian authorities are criminalizing the generous and selfless services offered by members of the Baha’i community in support of others in need.

There are currently at least 70 individuals either in detention or serving prison sentences, the largest number in the past six years, reflecting the recent upsurge in the level of persecution of the Baha’i community. And about 1,200 others are either involved in ongoing court proceedings relating to incidents of persecution or have been sentenced and are awaiting the summons to serve their prison terms. Sentencing by the courts has also become increasingly harsh, with tens of Baha’is sentenced to a combined total of hundreds of years in prison in recent weeks.

Detained Baha’is are routinely interrogated and, at the beginning of recent interrogations, several prisoners experienced threats and psychological pressure and abuse. In some cases, the threats did lead to physical harm being inflicted on some of the prisoners, including women.

The unjust treatment of those in detention has recently extended to the denial of leave for prisoners to visit dying loved ones.

Baha’is that have been released on bail are required to post exorbitant amounts either in cash or by posting their property deeds as collateral. Bails for Baha’is are now typically on the order of 20 to 80 times the annual salary of an individual employed in government service in Iran, placing a heavy financial burden on these Baha’is and their extended families. A recent example was of a young woman from Shiraz, in her early twenties, being required to post bail of an amount close to US $200,000, a vast sum for any ordinary Iranian citizen.

State-sponsored theft, denial of education, and hate speech

Another disturbing trend has been the nature of items being confiscated from Baha’i homes. Whereas previous confiscations usually focused on Baha’i sacred books, photographs, and mobile electronic devices and computer equipment, recent searches and confiscations have included any available cash and bank cards, personal jewelry and other valuable items, property deeds, vehicle deeds, identity documents and passports, as well as home-based tools and equipment used for generating livelihoods for Baha’is who have previously faced the forced closure of businesses and shops.

The confiscated items of value, often equivalent to hundreds or even thousands of US dollars, and often comprising all of their life’s savings, are rarely returned to the owners. This amounts to state-sponsored theft. Confiscating work-related tools and property deeds is clearly aimed at further impoverishing and demoralizing the Baha’i community within what is already a dire economic situation for most citizens across the country.

The last 18 months have also seen a recurrence of rural land confiscations and property destruction by the Iranian government, with irrigated and valuable farmlands confiscated, homes demolished, and families displaced.

University-age Baha’is have long been denied entry into universities or institutes of higher learning. But a disturbing new feature emerged in the current academic year: students were asked to sign declarations denying the authority of their religious institutions in order to be granted entry into university. The government’s declaration form is worded in such a way as to be a recantation of faith through denial of one of the basic tenets of Baha’i belief.

A conspicuous increase in hate speech against Baha’is has also been recently observed in Iran. The key players in this propaganda are state news agencies, especially those directly linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Supreme Leader, and their propagandists, on social media platforms such as X and Telegram, from Friday prayer Imams, by an Iranian conspiracy theory group, and from other individuals backed by government organizations. Hateful material against Baha’is accuse them of being behind the recent protests, of promoting permissiveness, of being against Islam and Shiism, being spies for Israel and the West, and being part of a political movement that seeks to undermine the state.

Denial of burial rights and citizenship rights

Another trend is the progressive erosion of Baha’i burial rights and actions by the Iranian government attempting to seize control of Baha’i cemeteries in a number of locations across the country. The Baha’i cemetery in the city of Arak, which had been in use for 120 years, was recently placed up for auction without the permission of the Baha’is and even as Baha’is themselves were prevented from re-purchasing it from the authority that confiscated it in the first place. The Baha’i cemetery in Karaj was fenced off by the authorities and a process is underway for the authorities to take control of its management. And the management of the Baha’i cemetery in Tehran has been forcibly taken over by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence, in coordination with the authority for Muslim cemeteries, or Behesht-e-Zahra. Baha’is formerly involved in its supervision have been detained and jailed. The new management has subsequently carried out several forced burials of deceased Baha’is in the absence of family members and without observing Baha’i burial rights—and has frequently denied Baha’is entry to the cemetery to visit the graves of loved ones. The agents have, meanwhile, buried deceased Baha’is in the area known as the Khavaran mass grave, the site of the burial of between 5,000 to 8,000 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience executed by the Islamic Republic during the 1980s. Burying Baha’is in this site appears to be an attempt by the government to progressively eliminate the memory of the mass grave by replacing it with a Baha’i cemetery. The move is against the expressed wishes of the Baha’i community out of respect for the families of those buried in the mass grave.

The final trend observed by the Baha’i International Community is the progressive erosion of Baha’i civil rights under the law—particularly with respect to the registration and recognition of Baha’i marriages. Previously, Baha’i marriages were registered in a physical registry by notaries and a marriage certificate was then issued. But more recently, the Iranian government has introduced an online digital registry system which does not provide an option for registrants to select “Baha’i” or “other” as their religion in the religious affiliation data entry field. Any application that does not include information in this field is invalid. This has serious implications for the registration of a marriage itself, rendering it impossible, with the couple thereafter legally considered as being in an unrecognized de facto relationship. And this, in turn, has serious implications for any subsequent registrations of births and other social rights.

Our Story Is One

But the Iranian government’s anti-Baha’i narrative finds less and less acceptance in Iranian society. The Baha’i International Community has been heartened to see public opinion shift over the past several years in Iran; today, many of their fellow citizens see the Baha’is in Iran as an integral and positive part of Iran’s diverse family. Meanwhile, the persecution they have suffered for 44 years is coming to be understood as the same oppressive treatment that is now being inflicted on Iranians of all backgrounds. Iran’s government is failing in its efforts to drive a wedge between Baha’is and their compatriots—making it all the more desperate and brutal in its efforts to stigmatize and suppress the Baha’i community.

A recent case in Isfahan—following the arrest of 10 innocent Baha’i women—saw intelligence agents go from house to house to harass and pressure neighbors and associates of these Baha’is to lodge formal complaints against them. A few individuals did so, with great reluctance and under duress; yet later, some of them apologized to the Baha’is for accusations they were forced to take by the security services. The Iranian government is trying to fabricate evidence in their campaign against the Baha’is merely for public consumption—given that their legal system does not appear to require any evidence, even fabricated evidence, to convict Baha’i defendants.

The groundswell of support for Iran’s Baha’i community—from Iranians of all backgrounds inside and outside the country—is reflected in the thousands of contributions pouring in to the ongoing #OurStoryIsOne campaign. The Baha’i International Community launched this campaign in June 2023 to commemorate 40 years since the execution of 10 Baha’i women in Shiraz, and to signal its support for equality and justice for all. Countless Iranians and others have responded. Our story is theirs; their story is ours.

Mr. Vice-President,

Over 130 days have passed since the detention of 9 Yemeni Baha’is, including women, who have been forcibly disappeared and denied access to lawyers or due process. In May 2023, armed Houthis with semi-automatic weapons raided a peaceful Baha'i gathering,  detaining 17 Baha’is, including five women. So far, only eight individuals have been released. The Baha'is in Yemen want the best for their country, and should be allowed to gather peacefully. 

The detained Baha'is, especially two women, have faced intense pressure from Houthi security to recant their beliefs and sign documents that prohibit their religious practice, both of which they resisted—in a clear demonstration of religious persecution.

This assault aims to terrorize Yemeni Baha’is and plant fears of reprisals that could threaten the Baha’i community’s existence. 

Mr. Vice-President, 

Seven UN Security Council members, including Albania, Brazil, France, Malta, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, called for the immediate release of the Yemeni Baha’is and protection of their religious freedoms by the de facto authorities. We seek continued  international support to urge the Houthis to release the detained Baha’is immediately and without delay.

This Council session will be adopting a resolution on Yemen. To convey the International community’s disapproval of the Houthis behavior, it must explicitly include a reference to freedom of religion or belief and mention the rights of the Baha’is by name.