Claire Hajaj on the Challenges and Possibilities of Peacemaking

Our fall 2025 Buffett Symposium on youth-led peacebuilding brought together activists, politicians, NGO leaders, and negotiators from across the world to explore how youth are transforming the future of conflict resolution and justice.

This panel discussion featured a conversation with Claire Hajaj, a specialist in conflict and post-conflict dynamics with experience working on the United Nations Security Council and the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, on the evolving landscape of peacebuilding in the 21st century. Drawing on her career supporting UN-led negotiations in Myanmar, Lebanon, and Iraq, Hajaj explored how the meaning of peace has shifted — from the optimism of the post-Cold War era to today's fragmented, transnational conflicts shaped by misinformation, digital polarization, and the declining authority of large multilateral institutions. The conversation also examined the distinctive and underutilized role that young people can play in creating the conditions for lasting peace.

Panelists included:

• ⁠Claire Hajaj⁠, Executive Director of Inter Mediate and author of Ishmael's Oranges

• Moderator ⁠Liana Liu Ioannides⁠, a second-year undergraduate studying journalism and math, is a leader of student-led speaker events at the Roberta Buffett Institute.

Key Takeaways

• Being "in the room" is not the most powerful position available to young peacebuilders. Hajaj cautioned against the tokenistic inclusion of youth delegations in formal negotiations, arguing that such gestures can function as exclusion dressed up as participation. The greater leverage lies outside the negotiating room — in young people's ability to generate public demand for change, set parameters for what a just resolution should look like, and hold decision-makers accountable in ways that make certain political choices difficult to ignore.

• Peacemaking requires persistence, humanity, and a willingness to learn from failure. Reflecting on her work at Inter Mediate, Hajaj emphasized that successful peace processes — from Northern Ireland to Colombia to Mozambique — have unfolded over years or decades, and that agreements often emerge from the bones of earlier failures. She also stressed the importance of mediators maintaining genuine empathy for all parties, including leaders who have done terrible things, as trust is the precondition for any progress at the negotiating table.

• The tools being used to sow conflict are the same tools that could be turned toward peace — and young people are best positioned to make that turn. Hajaj described the current moment as a transition between eras that peacemaking institutions have not yet navigated well, with disinformation and digital organizing now capable of mobilizing violence across borders. She argued that solutions will come not from diplomats but from young inventors — technologists, storytellers, and networkers — who can harness platforms, AI, and the power of narrative to build the demand and legitimacy that political leaders need to take risks for peace.