SAVE Youth Bangladesh has celebrated International Youth Day 2022 on 12 August with theme of youth against dangerous speech. A total of 331 participants joined in the zoom platform to celebrate this day. Among them 176 were male participants and 155 were female participants. SAVE youth has launched a campaign that is “Youth against Dangerous speech”. The primary objective of the campaign is to build awareness about Dangerous speech and counter dangerous speech focusing on online platforms. The primary focus of the campaign is to counter the inflammatory message that has the potentiality to create violence. SAVE youth’s youth mentors and mentees are specially working on different groups such as “Dangerous Speech Against Women”, “Dangerous Speech Against Ethnic Minority”, “Faith Based Dangerous Speech”, Dangerous Speech Against Indigenous People” and other related groups and this youth day was a part of the campaign. The program was organized in partnership with Resiliency Initiative and by support from Meta (Facebook) and the Asia Foundation (TAF).
Adam Burk (Senior Director, conflict and fragility, The Asia foundation) gave the opening speech and inaugurated the webinar. The whole session was divided into three panel discussions. The first session was “Countering Gender Based Dangerous Speech”, the second session was “Countering Ethnicity Based Dangerous Speech”, and the final session was “Countering Faith Based Dangerous Speech” Each of the sessions started with a motion video giving the primary concept.
The first session was moderated by Tanha Tanjin (youth mentor), and the panelists were Rezwana Saima, Anika Tahsin and Khurshida khan Trisha. The moderator at first gave a primary idea of the campaign and progress as well. The first panelist of this session talked about the issue, agenda and actions for online dangerous speech against women. The second speaker referred to possible approaches for gender inclusion and the final panelist talked about key factors of the campaign and gender based dangerous speech. The session ended with a positive note of working in more details to counter dangerous speech in the upcoming time.
The second session was “countering ethnicity Based Dangerous speech”. The moderator for this session was Fairuz Maliha Afra and the panelists were Syeda Tasnia Ahmed, Oishi kormokar and Probin Tripura. The highlights of this session were what type of Dangerous speech does ethnic groups face against themselves. The panelist particularly discussed inclusion of ethnic minorities, some success stories were shared to inspire how we can create an inclusive society, then finally by making recommendations about countering ethnicity based dangerous speech, the session ended.
The last but not the least session was “Faith-Based Dangerous speech. The session was moderated by Abdullah Al Sayed (president SAVE youth Bangladesh Dhaka university Chapter) The panelist was Arnab Roy Partho, Shahreen Farah khan and Shafayat Tohan. The moderator particularly emphasized on the concept of Faith based dangerous speech and its sensitivity as well. Panelist shared their experience of facing faith based dangerous speech and made recommendations on how as youth they can play a role to counter Faith based dangerous speech.
The national moderator of SAVE Youth and the Director of MGR, Aynul Islam concluded the panel discussion with closing remarks. In the closing remarks, he appreciated the intervention of youth and inspired the youth to intervene more in society.