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Interview with Tijani Christian, the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Youth Council

27.05.2020

On May 25, on our Instagram account @youthrussia we hosted a live stream with Tijani Christian, the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Youth Council (CYC). We talked about the changing global landscape, the role of the CYC during the pandemic and lots of other interesting topics.

First of all, Tijani gave a brief introduction about the Commonwealth of nations. It is a voluntary association of 54 independent countries. Most of them have historical ties with the British Empire. It is home to 2.4 billion people, and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. Tijani pointed out the unifying role of the Commonwealth Charter, which is a document of the values and aspirations that expresses the commitment of member states to the development of free and democratic societies and the promotion of peace and prosperity to improve the lives of all the people of the Commonwealth. According to him, the Commonwealth Charter is comparable to the Constitution of a country – all people have their own values but everyone recognizes its importance. Moreover, he compared the Commonwealth with a big family, “Everyone has cousins that one only wants to see at the Christmas vs the other ones who one wants to meet daily.”

“60% of the Commonwealth population is below 30. The Commonwealth Youth Council is a representative voice of 1.3 billion young people around the world. We ensure that the voice of young people primarily is recognized within international policy space. The CYC is an officially registered NGO which was created with the ability to be involved and to engage young people in Commonwealth processes,” noted Tijani. He also highlighted that every two years they hold fora where youth participation is not a tokenism.

Tijani shared his thoughts about the priorities of the Commonwealth Youth Council. He admitted that priorities change according to the time period. However, the main priority of the organization is always the satisfaction of young people’s demands. “Now we want to see how many goals we can achieve in two years, because nowadays we face a lot of requests made by young people related to unemployment, entrepreneurship, climate change, gender issues, health and wellness,” he added.

Tijani discussed with the followers the CYC activity during the pandemic. “It’s not something that we do on a daily basis. Our way of communicating has changed and, respectively, now we adjust our online events to the reality of COVID-19. Although we are physically distant that doesn’t mean that we are socially away from each other,” he shared. Tijani said that the CYC has started organizing dialogues bringing young people and experts related to different aspects of the COVID-19 mitigation. He gave an example of setting up a project “Corona Hacks” (http://coronahacks.com) a virtual hackathon aimed at finding innovative solutions to the crisis caused by the pandemic, in cooperation with the Caribbean Regional Youth Council (CRYC) and other partners. And he invited all the viewers to take part in this project. “When you see the landscape changing, take a new online-course! I would recommend a data-science one,” he advised.

Speaking about the cooperation of the CYC and Russian youth NGOs, he said that this interview is a good example and he expressed interest in expanding further cooperation. Tijani recalled that his acquaintance with the National Youth Council of Russia started within the preparations for the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students in 2017. Back then he was chairing the Caribbean Regional Youth Council and he was happy to promote the event among the Caribbean youth.

At the end of the interview he shared his opinion about the offensive post of the White House on World War II (“On May 8, 1945, America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis!”). “I can’t speak for the president Trump. What’s said is said. However, that’s not the general opinion across the Commonwealth, because our grandparents also fought against nazism in WWII and we remember that well,” he stressed.

Watch full interview: https://youtu.be/-2XJp1_P__Q.