Washington conference explores power of youth in Middle East

In a conference organized by the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Middle East experts explored the challenges facing youth in the region.
kurdistan24.net

WASHINGTON, United States (Kurdistan24) – In a conference organized by the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Middle East experts explored the challenges facing youth in the region.

The event titled “Writing the Future: Harnessing the Power of Youth in the Middle East” was meant to shed light on the economic difficulties youth encounter in the region.

One of the panelists, William Reese, President and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, spoke to Kurdistan24 about Kurdish youth.

“I think the Kurdish young people are doing what people do from almost every part of the world, and that is they want a better future,” he explained.

“That means they want a society where there’s a role for them to play politically, civically, and socially,” he continued.

Reese added that Kurdish youths strive to be “economically enviable” where they get jobs and begin their businesses.

Another speaker, Jasmine El-Gamal, Senior Fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, discussed steps for improving opportunities in the Middle East for youth.

“When you’re thinking about an issue like this [challenges youth face], to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all situation or solution, every country in the Middle East is different, it has its own challenges,” she said.

El-Gamal added that individually dissecting each country in the region is necessary to find “applicable solution[s].”

Mattias Lundberg, a Lead Specialist for Global Partnership for Youth in Development at the World Bank, stated that youth in the Middle East faced similar obstacles that youth around the world encounter.

However, Lundberg did point to some things youth in the Middle East experience unique from the rest of the world, specifically from an economic stand point.

“Markets seem more constrained, it’s difficult for young people to get into businesses, it’s difficult for them to start businesses, laws and policies are more constraining,” he explained.

 

 

(Abbas Zangana contributed to this report from Washington, DC)