In February 2012 four Elders travelled to Bihar, India, to meet a group of young people campaigning to stop child marriage. After listening to the teenage girls and boys, Desmond Tutu, Ela Bhatt, Gro Brundtland and Mary Robinson raised the issue with Bihar's Chief Minister, urging him to support the growing movement to end this harmful practice.
Throughout their work, the Elders strive to hear from young people. Having met youth of Cairo, Gaza, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Pyongyang, Ramallah and Seoul in the past few years, they welcomed the opportunity of their biannual gathering in Rio de Janeiro, in October 2011, to meet around fifty young Brazilians.
In June 2011 Elders Gro Brundtland, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu travelled to Ethiopia to visit communities affected by child marriage and convene a meeting of experts and activists working to end child marriage around the world.
In April 2011 Jimmy Carter, Martti Ahtisaari, Gro Brundtland and Mary Robinson travelled to North and South Korea. With tensions high between the two countries and negotiations at a standstill, they hoped to encourage all parties involved to resume dialogue.
In May 2011, following months of post-election violence, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu travelled to Côte d’Ivoire to encourage a process of national reconciliation and healing.
During their visit to the divided island of Cyprus in December 2009, the Elders filmed a documentary about the dedicated Cypriots working to locate and identify the remains of the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots who were killed in the 1960s and 1970s. These photographs tell the story behind the film.
During their trip to the Middle East in October 2010, the Elders visited East Jerusalem where they met Palestinian residents and joined a weekly demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah.
At the start of their October 2010 visit to the Middle East, Mary Robinson, Ela Bhatt and Lakhdar Brahimi spent a day in the blockaded Gaza strip. A ban by Israel and Egypt prohibits the import of building materials and severely restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. The Elders say the blockade is illegal, unconscionable and counterproductive – and call for it to be lifted immediately.
Twenty Palestinian students leave Gaza for the first time to meet Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel and Mary Robinson in South Africa, and Gro Brundtland in Norway.
The Cyprus Community Media Centre's ‘What’s your story?’ campaign involved collecting stories from people across the island who were interested in sharing anecdotes, thoughts, testimonies and memories about themselves and of Cyprus.
