Top challenges and opportunities for Arab youth

With more than half of its population under 25-years-old and the world’s highest regional youth unemployment rate, the MENA region stands at a critical juncture, according to a report.

This youthful populace can turn into either a “youth dividend” or a “youth liability”, contingent upon the region’s ability to create an enabling environment in which young people’s aspirations can be fulfilled, the ‘Rethinking Arab Employment’ report says.

Solutions to date show little progress in confronting the challenge of youth unemployment in a structural manner, in spite of existing financial means.

Despite the widely acknowledged importance of the challenge and many efforts underway, little progress has been made to effectively address youth unemployment. “Persisting high youth unemployment rates in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – clearly demonstrate that effectively addressing youth employment requires more than budgetary capacity and economic growth”, says the WEF report.

Possible explanations of limited progress are a lack of common understanding of the problem or a perception that risks associated with comprehensive solutions are too high.

Stakeholders tend to view the issue of youth unemployment from varying angles based upon their assumptions about the root cause of the problem. Shaped by these assumptions, policies often tackle the issue in a selective manner, without fundamentally confronting the status quo.

With this in mind, the first phase of the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Arab Employment initiative engaged leaders from business, government, civil society and academia to develop a holistic analysis of the employment system in Arab resource-endowed economies, with specific emphasis on GCC countries. This approach sought to create a shared understanding of the structural reasons for youth unemployment, while raising awareness of future pressures to the current system were it to be continued, as well as the potential consequences of interventions.

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Top challenges and opportunities for Arab youth