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João Victor Guedes, Vice President of the Youth Organization of the Democratas in Brazil, only started working abroad after attending a seminar in the International Academy for Leadership.

Among other names, there was the re-election of Thomas Leys (L², Belgium) for the presidency, the election of the former vice president Naomi Rokkum (NUV, Norway) for secretary general, the re-election of the vice president Mateusz Trybowski (Young Liberals of Canada) and the first election of the vice presidents Christian Dragsdahl (Radikal Ungdom, Denmark), Rabih Fakhreddine (Future Youth, Lebanon, and alumnus of the IAF Political Leadership seminar 2010) and Stanislav Anastassov (Youth Movement for Rights and Freedom, Bulgaria). For auditors, Daniel Sebastian George (JuLis, Germany) and Boye Bjerkholt (NUV) were elected.

Liberals from more than 20 countries got together in Istanbul (Turkey) from November 26th to December 4th due to an initiative organized by the International Federation of Liberal Youth, to promote freedom of expression and the importance of youth activism around the globe.

The first step given by the organization was the seminar “Freedom of Expression: a Right or a Responsibility?” where 30 young leaders debated its different concepts and the many ways liberals are fighting for it under different scenarios and realities.

During the seminar, the participants were also able to visit a local newspaper that suffered in the near past a government persecution that resulted in the killing of one of their journalists. This case helped youngsters to understand how hard it is to be in a society that doesn’t respect the freedom speech of its citizens.
After it, on the 2nd of December, IFLRY held its first public conference, also directed to the same theme, where the Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil – former delegate at our international events – received the IFLRY Award on Freedom of Expression. As Nabil is jailed due to speaking against the military government of Egypt and would not be able to receive the prize, a symbolic action was made by sending him 100 post cards signed by all the participants of the conference.

In the last two days, the International Federation of Liberal Youth had its 64th General Assembly, responsible for approving important resolutions on themes as the before mentioned Egyptian political situation, a complete review of IFLRY manifesto and the biannual election for its Bureau Members.

During the General Assembly, the International Federation of Liberal Youth also approved as new full members the 3H Movement (Turkey) and the Free Youth Front (Egypt) and for candidate member the ARI Movement (Turkey), which is also a partner of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.