An AUCian advisor at the United Nations

AUC sophomore and Tunisian activist Amir Ben Amuer was elected in October to be one of 16 young people from around the world to serve as a post-conflict advisor on the United Nations Habitat Youth Advisory Board.

During his four-year appointment, Ben Amuer will advise the UN Habitat on strategies that aim to involve young generations in sustainable urbanization and urban development.

“My story started in Tunisia, especially in the post-revolution period [in 2011], after the collapse of the ex-regime [and] civil society movement in Tunisia witnessed a major boom,” Ben Amuer said.

Since it is mainly the youth who sparked the revolution in Tunisia, calling for job opportunities, civil rights, and social justice, Ben Amuer believes that they will play a very important role in shaping the community.

“Youth did what our fathers and grandfathers couldn’t do,” he said.

“Young people are the change that the world should recognize and support; youth are the energy that nations need to get built and to prosper,” Ben Amuer added.

He trusts that empowering these youth by giving them roles in education, decision-making, and providing them with political and economic knowledge will help establish a better foundation for future endeavors, aided by the fact that their fresh perspective gives them an advantage over the older generation.

Amuer was adamant about spreading this ideal beyond the walls of his own country and that’s when he decided to up the ante and take his activism global.

He cooperated with international institutions like the United Nations Development Program and the Middle East Partnership Development (MEPI).

He soon became the chairman of MEPI’s projects working on encouraging members of the community to vote during the parliamentary and presidential elections in Tunisia.

But nabbing such a pivotal role on the UN Habitat Advisory Board didn’t come easy, as evidenced by Ben Amuer’s hefty list of accomplishments.

He was a founding member of 2013’s “WeYouth” organization in Tunisia, which he says is a non-governmental youth-led association that seeks to empower youth participation in decision- making, and contributing towards socio-cultural, political, and economic uplifting.

“What made me really interested in international work is believing that the international community along with local ones can really make a change in our society and ensure sustainable development worldwide,” he said.

It is also for this reason that he decided to apply for the UN Habitat Youth Advisory in 2015. “Our work should focus more on holding UN member states accountable toward youth participation that would need a lot of advocacy and lobbying,” Ben Amuer told The Caravan.

He explains that this will result in a strengthened youth generation that is capable of changing communities and ensuring their rights based on

their own perspectives. “Governments should be more cooperative and more open to advocacy and people’s wants,” he said, adding, “…the world today revolts against dictatorships, people want dignity and their rights. Love and peace will always win.”

According to a statement from UN Habitat’s Youth Unit Leader Douglas Ragan published on the organization’s websites, youth advisors such as Ben Amuer take up their posts “at a critical time, with the global community adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the important SDG 11 Urban Goal, and on the verge of creating the New Urban Agenda at Habitat III next year.”