Samira Fatma Baručija is from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is an activist, trying to facilitate dialog, interfaith work, and reinforce the importance of living together for the sake of peace and security. Most of her work nowadays is focused on peacebuilding and creating cultures of peace. For the most of her nine-year-long experience in civil society, Samira has been an educator trying to use the platform of non-formal education to raise awareness, motivate and empower individuals and groups, reinforcing their role in the change they want to see.
The work that Samira is doing locally is done through a youth-led, youth founded organization called Youth for Peace. She is a project coordinator and an educator working on several initiatives with Youth for Peace. She is also a part of the UNDP’s Global Youth Programme as one of 16 young people from around the world, working toward fulfilling the UN’s 2030 agenda. Samira took a role of a speaker on a panel on “Promoting dialogue and reducing insecurity” during the conference in preparation for HLPF 2019: “Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies: SDG 16 implementation and the path towards leaving no one behind.”
Since 2014, Samira has been a Youth Leader for the United Religions Initiative. During the Accelerate Peace conference at Stanford University, Samira spoke on ending religiously motivated violence, stressing the importance of leaving no one behind and changing the position of the marginalized groups. She is currently holding the position of the Regional Coordinator for United Religions Initiative’s Multiregion, working on creating and promoting interfaith cooperation and building cultures of peace, justice, & healing.