Arab Youth Event
Studying Youth in the Arab World
A two-day Seminar
The Research and Policy Forum on Youth in the Arab World (IFI) and the Goethe Institute (Lebanon)joined forces to bring regional and international youth sector researchers together on 13-14 January 2009, inaugurating this annual seminar on Studying Youth in the Arab World.
With a long-standing tradition of social research to draw on, IFI and Goethe brought together individuals and institutions in the fields of policy-making, civil society, the corporate world and scholarship to assess and propose research priorities and to explore how research can influence policy more effectively.
Read / download Seminar Agenda
Why study youth?
"There is no one who wakes up every morning to look at the situation of Arab youth," says IFI Director Rami Khouri. Being a neglected segment of society in terms of political participation, access to health services, and freedoms, youth share a number of characteristics worthy of further investigation.
Youth make up "the most unserious sector in the Arab world with the most unserious policies," according to Khouri. "The absence of youth policy is a policy itself," asserts Jamil Mouawad of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies.
On the research level the picture looks gloomy: there is no proper clearinghouse of data on Arab youth. The absence of a valuable record of previous research often leads to a duplication of efforts and overlap of studies. Statistical frames used in past surveys are also extremely important for researchers and yet remain unavailable. The lack of raw data and the delay of result publication are cited by Dr. Riad Tabbara as major obstacles encountered by researchers today.
The role of IFI becomes relevant as a link between research and policy. With the lack of extensive studies on Arab youth and the chaotic state of existing research, IFI steps in with a program on Youth in The Arab World. Drawing on the policy-related research of AUB's internationally respected faculty, IFI aims to become a catalyst and central repository for regional and international research and policy analysis on Arab youth.
Read / download Full Seminar Report
Opening Remarks: Framing the Research Agenda
Dr. Samir Khalaf, American University of Beirut
"In brief, we are facing a textbook instant of anomy at all levels. The young are living a dissonant life because they cannot incorporate the scripts they hear and hence there is a discrepancy between the normative expectations and how they are living it ... I think at this stage in the Arab world people are still in transit, in a state that they can be redirected elsewhere. But so far the responses are a typical textbook example of what happens when you are afraid, the 3 Fs. You either freeze, and many young have frozen, they don't want to react or redefine. Or they take flight; what is interesting is where they are taking flight. This is where much of the flights so far have been in areas where we re-invent, the earlier bubbles that we were running away from. Hence the community, sect, and the smaller bubbles have become sharper than they used to be during my generation. Finally, and this is why discussing youth becomes very important, how are youth fighting? How are they resisting? In what areas can they begin to question these inconsistent images and messages they hear outside?"
Read / download Full Text for Dr. Khalaf's opening remarks
Media Reaction:
Al-Anwar newspaper | Compilation of clippings from several newspapers