Your role in FORB
The role of youth can play in advancing Religious Freedom
The role of youth can play in advancing Religious Freedom
When FORB Is Ignored
FORB indeed has many benefits when it is respected and protected. However, negligence and disregard for this imperative right have, throughout history and in recent experience, shown the horrific effects intolerance can have on human lives. It often begins quietly; with prejudice, mockery, or exclusion. But left unchecked, it grows into discrimination, then violence. What starts as hostility in words can end in hostility with weapons.
It manifests in: refusing people a voice in their community because of their belief, denying them equal access to public services, or dismissing their dignity as people. Other times it’s systemic discrimination: laws and social practices that target minority faiths, restrict worship, or close doors to education and employment. Then the escalation follows: violence, forced displacement, and the collapse of vital infrastructure; schools, hospitals, and places of worship. Women and children bear the brunt through sexual violence, forced marriage, or orphanhood. Men and boys are conscripted into armed groups or forced into hiding. Finally, society fractures and decays, as investments lessen then disappear, economies weaken, and public trust collapses. Insecurity becomes normal, rights become fragile, and fear governs daily life. What began as prejudice ends as national decline.
This is not theory. It is a pattern the world has seen repeatedly. Intolerance corrodes societies from within; it destroys the possibility of peace long before a single weapon is drawn. That is why it must be confronted early and deliberately, by those who still have the power to stop it.
The Responsibility of a Generation
Youth are the present and the future of Africa. But the future belongs to those who prepare for it today (Malcolm X). It belongs to those willing to shape it. The Africa envisioned in Agenda 2063: peaceful, united, and prosperous, will not emerge by chance. It will be built by the generation that refuses to repeat the mistakes of intolerance and division.
As young Africans, we are the inheritors of both the continent’s pain and its promise. The choices we make today, how we treat people who believe differently, how we speak about faith, and how we use our voices, will determine what kind of legacy we leave behind. Do we want to be remembered as a generation that watched freedom fade, or one that defended it with courage and compassion?
How the Youth Can Make a Difference
Protecting FORB does not require a position of power. It begins with how we live, lead, and influence our immediate environments. The following are practical and realistic ways youth can act where they are:
Securing the Future Freedom of Religion or Belief is not only a right to defend; it is a responsibility to live. It defines the moral climate in which all other freedoms survive. The Africa we envision under Agenda 2063, an Africa of peace, prosperity, and dignity depends on how this generation handles difference. To protect FORB is to protect the future. The legacy we leave will not be written in treaties or conferences alone, but in how we treat the people beside us every day. So, let us ask ourselves honestly: when the story of our generation is told, will it be said that we preserved freedom, or that we let it die in silence?
Free online micro-course
A free, introductory, online human rights course designed to raise awareness of, and support for, freedom of religion or belief (FORB) in Africa and further afield.
Out of every 10 Christians murdered for their faith across the world, nine are killed in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Murder, torture and kidnapping are an everyday threat. Extremists want to destroy the church and are using unthinkable violence. The very survival of the church is at risk – unless we act.
The text of this website was prepared in English and can be translated using Google Translate. No automated translation is perfect. We recommend referring to the original text for the most accurate information.