Young and Out of Work in the Middle East

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 23, 2007— -- One in four young adults in the Middle East is unemployed, a figure that has policymakers and security analysts worrying for the future of an already unstable region.

Youth unemployment in the region is 25 percent — the highest for any part of the world, and well above the global average of 14 percent. In Egypt today, it means 1.15 million young people out of work; in Iran, there are 1.3 million.

Whether there is a direct link from youth employment to political violence is a matter of ongoing debate. Even so, the prospect of 100 million idle or marginalized people between the ages of 15 and 29 — 30 percent of the Middle East population — is of major concern to those watching and living in the region.

"They could be diverted into the terrorism track, into violence, political violence, and so on. That's the concern from an American point of view," said Hafed Al Ghwell of the Dubai School of Government.

"From a regional point of view, the issue is really more of a survival," Al Ghwell said. "It's an issue of development for development's sake. It's an issue of addressing concerns of a large segment of the population."

Al Ghwell and his colleagues at DSG, a regional affiliate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, have launched the Middle East Youth Initiative to tackle the factors that lead, not just to unemployment, but to other forms of social exclusion for the youth demographic in the Arab world. For example, because young adults are not achieving financial independence, they put off marriage. In Morocco, men marry at age 32, seven years later than men a generation ago.

Instead of progressing into adulthood, many Middle Easterners find themselves in what the DSG calls "waithood," an idle holding pattern in which teens and twentysomethings continue to live with their parents. Though highly educated, they lack a productive, professional outlet for their energies. As a result, alternatives ranging from migration to the West to engagement in extremist activity, become relatively more appealing.