By Francis Kimanene
In post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, a remarkable pilgrimage unfolds each summer. A handful of young people from across the Balkans traverse seven cities over two weeks, visiting memorial sites, participating in interfaith dialogues, and designing peace initiatives amidst the region’s haunting beauty. This immersive experience dubbed the “State of Peace Youth Academy” represents a microcosm of a profound fusion of youth-led peace-building and transformative tourism as engines of reconciliation.
Today, millions of international tourist arrivals troop to a place previously viewed as an irredeemable war zone creating unprecedented opportunities for cross-cultural connection. Simultaneously, landmark United Nations resolutions have formally recognised youth as essential architects of sustainable peace. Where these currents intersect, a powerful force of healing and one of global proportions emerges confirming how potent the youth are in peace building.
The institutional recognition of the youth’s role has catalysed concrete programmes worldwide. In Kosovo, the United Nations Development Programme’s “Youth 4 Inclusion, Equality & Trust” initiative recently selected a few young peace builders for a regional fellowship. These champions of reconciliation engage in intensive peace education, leveraging creative media and cross-border networking. Such programmes acknowledge a critical insight from that requires moving beyond tokenism. When young people co-design projects and lead community planning, they dismantle barriers through showing by doing.
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITER) has a specialised e-learning course on Youth and Peace-building that empowers youth activists with practical skills in project design and conflict analysis, and another equipping policymakers to support youth inclusion meaningfully. Graduates of that course are equipped with skills that enable them to translate high-level frameworks of youth inclusion in transformative endeavours including in thematic areas in tourism and people connections.
Beyond formal programmes, a subtler revolution unfolds through “peace tourism” that entails travel designed to intentionally engage with sites symbolising reconciliation, non-violence, and historical healing. For instance, Hiroshima, which has now transformed from atomic devastation into a global beacon for nuclear abolition, welcomes over a million annual visitors to its Peace Memorial Park. For many, particularly young travellers, that pilgrimage reshapes worldview, proving tourism’s capacity to foster what the late scholar Johan Vincent Galtung termed as “positive peace.” In that context, peace is not merely the absence of violence but the presence of justice, equity, and resilient institutions.
Similarly, Ypres city in Belgium, once obliterated in World War I trench warfare has over time consciously reinvented itself through the “In Flanders Fields” museum as a “city of peace.” The surrounding region, drenched in the blood of half a million soldiers at some point, now draws visitors to reflect on reconciliation’s fragile beauty. These destinations, alongside emerging hubs like Dayton—Ohio’s International Peace Museum—create physical spaces where youth encounter the evident legacy of peace-building.
Closer home, post-genocide Rwanda exemplifies how strategic tourism investment directly supports stability. Research by the Institute for Economics & Peace reveals that tourism sustainability strongly correlates with “positive peace” pillars fostering intercultural tolerance, enhancing human capital through language and hospitality skills, and incentivising governments to maintain functionality and safety. Elsewhere, when Nepal implemented its “Codes of Conduct for Peace Responsive Tourism,” it recognised this virtuous cycle.
As Mark Twain once observed, “Travel is fatal to prejudice,” and today’s youth, who are increasingly digital natives in an interconnected world inherently grasp this truth. Yet underfunding youth-led initiatives, tokenistic inclusion, and the lingering perception of tourism as mere leisure rather than a diplomatic force still persist. The vision articulated by the International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) views every traveller as an “Ambassador for Peace.” This view deserves to be systematically cultivated.
Meanwhile, the fusion of youth agency and peace-sensitive travel offers more than economic hope for it builds what Pope John Paul II called “the moral and intellectual basis for international understanding.” In a world where conflict displaces millions, the young peace-builders navigating memorial trails, designing cross-border projects, and welcoming strangers as future friends are not merely tourists but weavers of the social fabric who stitch together, one journey at a time, creating the possibility of lasting world peace.
Kenya’s quest for an environment that fosters peace as an essential imperative for the growth of tourism is not a far-fetched dream lacking in globally and historically inspiring references. We have bounteous examples that point to why we should desist from entertaining anarchy in order to spur tourism and why scars of what we have caused the soul of our nation in the past can become useful and timeless reminders of why we must jealously guard our tourism through maintaining peace.
Dr Kimanene is a conservation expert based in Geneva, Switzerland
