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UN youth envoy: Arab world needs to see its youth as an asset

November 16, 2016 at 12:00 am

Arab leaders must treat their youth as an asset, not a liability, the UN’s youth envoy Ahmad Alhendawi said in Saudi Arabia today.

“This is a generation that is so willing to contribute,” Alhendawi told the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Foundation’s Global Forum.  He explained how youth willingness is instead met with many obstacles in the 22-nation region plagued by conflict since the Arab uprisings that began in 2010.

A new study released figures which Alhendawi said showed how the region’s average age is currently below 25 but the average age of politicians in Arab states is 58.

“This region has the highest rate of youth protest if you compare it to all other regions in the world,” Alhendawi explained, a Jordanian who has held the post since 2013. The figures also showed the wide gap in gender inequality: two-thirds of Arab women actively seek employment.

Another report by the United Nations labour agency in August showed how Arab states count for 30 per cent of the world’s high youth unemployment rate. To counter this, the region needs to create 60 million jobs by 2020, Alhendawi said.

To achieve this, the region needs to establish “an enabling environment” making it easier for young people to start businesses where they are seen “as an asset, not as a liability”.

The use of social media which drove mass support during the Arab Spring was a tool that showed how interested they are “in politics and…in public life” but so much when it comes to formal governmental institutions.

“This is our region,” Alhemdawi told delegates, “we have to reclaim it” and more needs to be done by the Arab world itself to provide solutions to its problems.