Young people in the Gulf States

1
Young people in the Gulf States

• Some reflections based on the UNs
• World Programme of Action for Youth
• Joop Theunissen
• Focal Point on Youth
• UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

2
What is youth?

• A statistical definition 15-24 years
• A period of transition from protection in
  childhood to self-determination in adulthood
• Why does the concept change?
• Changes in historical age
• Changes in social age

3
How do youth fit in globally?
4
Over 1.1 billion youth 85 per cent in the South
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Ten priorities of the United Nations for youth
agreed in 1995

• Education
• Employment
• Hunger and poverty
• Health issues
• The environment

• Drug abuse
• Delinquency
• Leisure
• Girls and young women
• Participation in decision-making

UN World Programme of Action for Youth to the
Year 2000 and Beyond, General Assembly resolution
50/81
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Hunger and Poverty

• How many young people live in poverty?
• Undernourished up to 160 million
• On lt1 per day 206 million
• On lt2 per day 515 million almost half of all
  youth!
• World Youth Report 2005, Table 1, page 5

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How many in poverty Middle East and Northern
Africa region

• 2 million under 1 per day
• 12 million under 2 per day
• 7 million on poor nutrition

8
Coping with poverty

• Labour forced entrepreneurship and
  self-employment in the informal sector
• Migration of young workers
• Domestic rural-urban migration(50-50 point
  rural/urban population was reached in 2002)
• International migration(175 million migrants in
  2002)

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Education The Good News

• The best-educated generation ever
• Since 1995, more children than ever complete
  primary school
• Four out of five eligible youth are in secondary
  education
• Some 100 million youth currently in tertiary
  education

10
Education The Bad News

• Large differences globally
• 130 million children currently not in school
• 133 million youth are illiterate
• Large gender differences
• Large differences between groups of countries

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Employment

• 88 million young people were out of work in 2004
  (up from 58 million in 1995)
• Youth are almost half of the worlds unemployed
• Globalization forces young people to become
  increasingly competitive internationally

12
Participation in decision-making

• Youth participation promotes social integration
  and cohesion in society
• 2 trends
• New forms of participatory structures away from
  membership-based organizations towards looser,
  network-based structures
• Yet, still very active spontaneous student
  movements that can bring about social change

13
Young people and health

• Some health risks of young people
• Reproductive health risks
• Behavioral risks
• 1 million deaths worldwide on accidents,
  violence, alcohol, tobacco and drugs
• Risk of poverty-related disease
• Pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS

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Girls and young women

• Gender-based stereotyping, including
  discrimination
• Unequal treatment in the worlds of education and
  work

• Access to reproductive health services to prevent
  STDs and pregnancy
• Violence against women female infanticide,
  genital mutilation sexual abuse and exploitation

15
Five New Youth Issues since 1995

• World Youth Report 2003
• Youth and Globalization
• Youth and ICT
• HIV/AIDS
• Youth and conflict prevention
• Intergenerational relations

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Youth and Globalization

• Economic globalization two views
• Benefits young people they are quick adapters
• Hurts young people they are being exploited
• Social aspects of globalization
• young people come closer together local issues
  become global issues vice versa glocalization
• it has created a more uniform youth culture -gt
  see next topic.

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Information and communication technology

• Traditional forms of socialization of young
  people are being challenged
• New technology brings a uniform culture of
• Information
• Pleasure
• Autonomy
• ?A new global youth culture, increasingly
  media-driven

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Young people and conflict

• Young people are offenders and victims - they
  kill and are being killed, more than any other
  group.
• They play a disproportionate large role!

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Youth and the MDGs

• An opportunity
• Youth are a dividend to build long-term social
  capital to reach the MDGs and economic and social
  development.
• A challenge
• Worldwide 200 million youth in poverty, 88
  million unemployed, 10 million with HIV/AIDS
• Youth are a tremendous resource that needs to be
  unleashed.

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Thank you!

• More information
• www.un.org/youth
• youth_at_un.org