From Terrorists to Peacemakers: Yosuke Nagai's Bold Vision to Transform Conflict Zones
Oxford researcher Yosuke Nagai shares his journey rehabilitating 2,800 former combatants.
Yosuke Nagai delivered a public lecture at All Souls College, University of Oxford, on November 27, recently embarking on his research days at Oxford.
"Whenever I’m in conflict zones, I always imagine the view I will see when I die," writes Nagai, 33, in his book, capturing the perilous nature of his work. As the founder of Accept International, Nagai leads the NGO dedicated to aiding young combatants fighting for non-state armed groups—commonly called terrorist groups—in conflict zones such as Somalia and Yemen. His mission is to help them disengage, rehabilitate, and reintegrate into society.
In Somalia, where his NGO operates a hotline for defectors, the stakes are high. The line receives threats from members of armed groups every day―“You’re an infidel, and we’re going to kill you”—as well as desperate pleas from those seeking to escape. The experts in Accept International coordinate convoys to retrieve defectors, navigating a volatile journey plagued by weekly suicide bombings and explosions.
Nagai’s journey began as a first-year university student when he came across a web article detailing Somalia’s plight. At the time, the armed group Al-Shabaab controlled half the country’s territory. The country had been in 21 years of anarchy since 1991, and that year alone saw 260,000 deaths.
Nagai founded an organisation with friends, initially focusing on rehabilitating Somali gangs in Kenya and Somalia. His scope eventually expanded to include former combatants from terrorist organizations, broadening its reach to Yemen, Indonesia, Colombia, and, most recently, parts of Palestine.
While many NGOs provide humanitarian aid for crises like famine, Nagai believes such efforts merely treat symptoms. “One of the biggest causes of these crises has always been armed conflicts. Someone has to stand up to solve it—that’s my belief,” he says. In Somalia, the prolonged strife with terrorist groups has eroded the nation’s foundations, leading to harsh crises over and over.
Nagai is particularly concerned with the plight of young people. “Through my experience with over 2,800 disengaged combatants, it’s evident that a substantial portion of individuals in non-state armed groups are young people,” he explains.
While international norms exist to protect child soldiers under 18, very little attention is given to young adults over 18 who are drawn into these conflicts. He challenges the international community’s selective empathy: “How about the young people in armed groups, the ones left behind by politics?”
His NGO offers disengaged combatants housing, meals, and at least a one-year rehabilitation program. This includes basic literacy, vocational training, and counselling. But the goal isn’t merely to reintegrate former fighters as civilians.
“We don’t aim to turn these young people into ‘ordinary’ citizens,” says Nagai. “We aim to transform them into peacemakers. That is the uniqueness of our mission.”