Nearly two-thirds of Arab youth outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expressed the lack of confidence in governments to tackle issues such as employment, corruption and rising cost of living, according to the 15th annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey.
The 15th annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, the largest study of the Arab world’s demographic, unveiled the findings of a large sample survey of its over 200 million youth.
The survey revealed that more than half of the youth respondents felt that their voice did not matter to the country’s leadership, the feeling was mostly driven my people in North Africa and Levant.
Arab Youth’s confidence in GCC governments
Over 78 percent of Arab youth in the GCC said that they believe that their voice matters in leadership, a majority of 87 percent say that their government has the right polices to address the most important concerns.
Among top concerns facing the Arab youth such as government employment, corruption, rising living costs, economic instability and climate change, the youth expressed confidence in their government addressing these issues.
Nearly all Emirati youth (98 percent) expressed confidence in their government’s ability to address unemployment. A similar outlook was observed in Saudi Arabia (70 percent), Oman (67 percent), Kuwait (64 percent) and Bahrain (61 percent). Only a mere 20 percent of GCC youth said that they believe it would be difficult to find a job in their country.
Youth in the GCC also expressed a positive outlook in regards to their government being able to handle corruption, over 97 percent of young men and women in the UAE revealed confidence as well as 84 percent of youth in Oman, 82 percent in Bahrain, 69 percent in Saudi Arabia and 56 percent in Kuwait.
Young Arab men and women in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE said that they were confident in their government’s ability to manage the rising cost of living. A mere 15 percent revealed that they struggled to pay their expenses in full. 16 percent of youth revealed that they were in debt due to reasons such as student loans, car loans, marriage loans and excessive shopping.
Emirati youth said that they were confident that the government could ensure economic stability, high confidence levels were also expressed by the youth in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The young Arab men and women in the GCC also believed that their governments could action climate change with 83 percent of youth saying that they country was going in the right direction.
Arab youth in North Africa and Levant, over 60 percent, said that their governments lacked the adequate policies to address important concerns.
The study found that approximately two-thirds of youth in North Africa and nearly three-quarters of youth in Levant believed their countries were heading in the wrong direction. In North Africa, only 38 percent of young Arabs were confident in their government’s capability to tackle unemployment, while in Levant, a region plagued by high levels of youth unemployment, only 32 percent expressed confidence in their government’s ability to address the issue. More than half of the youth in Levant and North Africa expressed difficulties in finding employment opportunities within their respective countries.
Nearly half of the respondents in both regions reported struggling to cover their expenses, with a significant portion, including 27 percent in Levant and 19 percent in North Africa, admitting to being burdened by debts, primarily stemming from student loans, medical bills, credit card bills, and car loans.
Concerning climate change, the study revealed that 46 percent of youth in North Africa and 39 percent in the Levant expressed confidence in their government’s ability to address this pressing issue. However, when it came to eradicating corruption, only 40 percent of North African youth and 28 percent of young people in the Levant expressed faith in their government’s effectiveness.
Sunil John, President, MENA, BCW and Founder of ASDA’A BCW, said: “What stands out in this year’s survey is the fact that, once again, young GCC citizens are poles apart from their fellow Arabs in North Africa and the Levant.”
“Over the past 15 years, our research has been a barometer of the hopes and fears of Arab youth in countries outside the Arabian Gulf, particularly on kitchen table issues such as jobs and rising living costs. A path to a better future for these young men and women must be found if we are to ensure the Arab world’s precious youth dividend is not lost,” he added.
“It is no small matter that the GCC nations are economically stronger, oil-producing nations, while the countries in North Africa and Levant – in particular, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestinian Territories, Syria, Sudan and Yemen – are conflict-ridden and only recovering from long years of a ravaging war,” he concluded.
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