SOUTH SHOUNEH, Dead Sea, Jordan — Every May, the rich and powerful corporate and government leaders of the Middle East gather at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Jordan to discuss a recurring agenda: the changing conditions of the world economy, and the broadly static conditions in the Middle East region. Every year, at this and other similar gatherings, some of the best minds and most successful and dynamic leaders in the region do three things: They diagnose the Middle East’s main constraints, offer guidelines on how to overcome them and how to enter an era of growth and prosperity, and they scratch their heads about why this region remains peculiarly immune to the transformations sweeping most other parts of the globe.
I have attended these gatherings since their inception a decade ago, and I find them to be a good barometer of the sentiments among a thin but powerful slice of the Arab world. Over the years, the most striking aspect of this annual pulse-taking of the region continues to be the persistent gap between the widespread acknowledgment of need for radical changes in political, economic, educational and social sectors, and the inability to actually make such change happen.
This year’s meeting attracted a record crowd of 1400 participants, suggesting that interest in the Middle East remains high. The most striking aspect of this year’s WEF was the recurrence of two issues that intruded into virtually every single session: the need to focus more seriously on youth-related policies, and the importance of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Neither of these are new issues, but it was striking how they came up at every single session or discussion, whether it was about economic growth, political trends, the role of foreign powers, technology, culture and the arts, environment or anything else. This is because these two issues structurally are the most important reasons for the potential for growth and prosperity, and, conversely, for the continued paralysis, autocracy and stagnation of the Arab world.
It is slightly depressing to hear the same issues raised in every gathering that takes place in or about the Arab world and the wider Middle East, without much progress on them. But it is also heartening that we seem to enjoy such a clear and widespread consensus on these issues. The main hurdle remains the transition from diagnosis to action and policy changes.
The unanswered large question about our region continues to be the same as it has been for two generations, since the oil-fuelled dominance of the modern Arab security state in the 1970s: Why do most Arab countries virtually ignore their single most important domestic source of both stress and opportunity — their youth — while they also deal with their single most critical external issue — war or peace with Israel — with the diligence of sleepwalkers?
The urgency of the youth issue in particular constantly resurfaces, thanks to new research and analysis by an increasingly professional cadre of scholars and policy analysts in the region and beyond. The most recent work was published last week by the Middle East Youth Initiative, a joint project of The Dubai School of Government and the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Entitled Missed by the Boom, Hurt by the Bust: Making Markets Work for Young People in the Middle East, the short study nicely captures the essence of analysis done by leading scholars in recent years on the various dimensions of youth during their transition from school and adolescence to college or work, adulthood, marriage and family, and active citizenship.
The study is grim reading, because it notes that young people did not benefit sufficiently from the recent boom and will suffer disproportionately from the current decline in the region. It notes that, “…despite six years of relatively high growth in the Middle East between 2002 and 2008, the transition to adulthood for many young people has remained stalled and, in some ways, outcomes have worsened. Young people continue to struggle in attaining job-relevant skills and high quality education. They continue to wait for good jobs, enduring long spells of unemployment or spending their most productive years trapped in informal jobs that fail to prepare them for better positions. In turn, young men and women increasingly delay marriage and family formation, unable to meet the costs associated with these life stages. Moreover, since outcomes in these spheres are interdependent, failure in one transition spills over into others, resulting in a debilitating state of waithood, when young people are left waiting to achieve a full state of adulthood.”
The Arab world knows clearly where it needs to move to shift from stagnation and repression to innovation and prosperity. If our government systems cannot walk and chew gum at the same time — address both the youth and peace issues at once — they should at least choose one of them to work on, and act intelligently and responsibly, for a change.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 25 May 2009
Word Count: 821
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