92 \ Global Youth Development Index and Report 2016 meet their needs. The Commonwealth makes a distinction between violence that is mainly physical in nature and violence that does not involve physical contact but has deep psychological effects.7 The psychological form of violence is experienced most intensely by young people marginalised by poverty, social status, gender or disability. Young people experience multiple forms of violence including physical assault, suicide, bullying, gang violence, armed conflict, and sexual violence. This chapter primarily focuses on violent conflict and its impact on the lives of young people. 4.2 Relationship between youth development and violence The relationship between youth development and violence is complex and, in some cases, symbiotic. Violence can affect short and long-term youth development outcomes: the problem is particularly acute in fragile states, where an under-developed youth population can easily fall prey to violence or become perpetrators of violence themselves. Positive youth development is thus a critical dimension of peace-building more broadly, as it can be both a product and producer of a peaceful society. All too often, however, young people in many parts of the world are viewed and treated as potential troublemakers or powerless victims of violence and conflict. 4.2.1  Young people as perpetrators of violence Young people, particularly young men but increasingly young women too, are a dominant demographic group among those who perpetrate violence, which has led some to regard young people as a threat to global peace and security. When there is an outbreak of violence, as witnessed during the Arab Spring protests, young people are often portrayed as leading actors in the conflict.8 While young people’s role as perpetrators of violence is well documented and highlighted, it is also true that only a minority of young people in any society is guilty of instigating or committing acts of violence.9 Even in conditions and contexts characterised by injustice, inequality and deprivation, most young people shun violence. The majority of young people caught in violent conflicts are mostly fighting for survival and a brave minority even tries to foster peace despite the risk of getting killed or incarcerated.10 Often when young people participate in violent conflict, they are a part of more established groups such as trade unions.11 Youth participation in conflict can sometimes be involuntary or a result of extreme coercion. For example, the involvement of young people in armed conflict in Uganda, Sudan and Nepal in recent years occurred primarily as a result of their abduction by armed insurgents and rebel groups.12 Children and young people have been frequently forcibly recruited into combat roles by rebel groups – for example, in Burundi, Guinea, Liberia and Rwanda – and their participation has had a long-lasting and traumatic impact on the rest of their lives.13 Those who were child soldiers not so long ago are a part of the youth population today. It is also worth noting that young people are likely to make up a significant proportion of national armed forces, with the definition of youth fitting into the military recruitment age range in many countries.14 4.2.2 Are countries with a youth bulge more prone to violent conflicts? Although the majority of young people do not participate in armed violence, in many parts of the world a minority of youth does so. Different risk factors at individual, community and country level explain why some young people turn to violence and others do not. Risk factors are ‘aspects of a person, group, or environment that make youth violence more likely to occur‘.15 At the individual level, risk factors can include a range of psychological and personal factors including engagement in risk-taking, peer pressure, unemployment, socio-economic status, and a history of juvenile delinquency.16 At the societal and country level, risk factors include a range of wider socio-economic and political factors such as poverty, inequality, illiteracy, availability of guns and drugs, unresponsive political systems and poor institutional accountability. The more these risk factors accumulate, the more the likelihood that a young person will engage in violence. While the debate on youth violence has many sub-texts, young people’s involvement in armed conflicts has often been correlated with demographic trends. Some researchers have drawn a link between the existence of large cohorts of youth and the risk of armed conflict, although the empirical evidence is inconclusive and contested. Figure 4.1 shows the correlation between internal peace and the proportion of youth population in countries. It suggests that countries with a low proportion of young people tend to have a higher level of internal peace, and vice versa. This correlation, however, does not establish causality