By John Pickard
The annual report of the moods and opinions of youth across the Arab world, is a devastating indictment of modern society as they see it, and a harbinger of huge social and political convulsions in the future.
The study was conducted in two parts: mostly before the coronavirus outbreak, with a second, smaller part later. Altogether, 4,000 young Arabs aged between 18 and 24, were interviewed, in all seventeen Arab states. Interviews were done in Arabic and English and with the sample split 50:50 between young men and women. These Arab states stretch from Morocco in the West to Iraq in the East, and from Syria to Sudan, and the results that came out were extremely significant.
The report begins, appropriately enough, with a timeline of some of the events in these Arab countries, running up to the first part of the survey. Starting with protest demonstrations in Sudan in January 2019, in which 800 were arrested and at least 19 killed, it briefly lists some other notable events, like protests in Algeria (president forced out), Israel bombing Gaza (20 killed), an Army crackdown in Sudan (118 killed), protests in Iraq (more deaths), a youth-led protests against corruption in Lebanon (Prime Minister resigns), another wave of protests in Iraq (at least 460 killed). The list does not even include the toll in lives and the devastation and hardship from the ongoing wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. This graphic timeline is the backdrop to the sombre and revolutionary mood of Arab youth.
Protest movements broke governments
“Hopeful of change”, the report concludes, “young Arabs in strife-hit nations support anti-government protests”. An understatement, if ever there was one.
“Following the events of the Arab Spring, when young Arabs in many countries took to the streets, calling for reforms and an end to corruption, four nations witnessed a change in government – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Eight years later, 2019 recorded a similar surge in youth-led protests, especially in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan, once again, leading to changes in leadership. When asked specifically, to young people in these four nations, 82 per cent of young people in Lebanon, 89 per cent each in Algeria and Iraq, and 88 per cent in Sudan said they supported the anti-government protests”.
Government corruption rife
One of the most all-pervading problems faced by young people has been corruption affecting all aspects of life, but particularly in government. When they were asked about corruption in their own governments, 77 per cent acknowledged that it exists, with 41 per cent saying it was “widespread”. The perception was that government corruption was far more rampant across North Africa (95 per cent) and the Levant (98 per cent) than elsewhere, but it is all relative. Of young people interviewed in Yemen, 88 per cent, pointed to corruption, as did 76 per cent in Iraq, and over sixty per cent in both Tunisia and Libya.
Not surprisingly, given the nature of both the so-called Palestinian Authority that administers parts of the West Bank on behalf of Israel, and Hamas which controls Gaza, 55% of Palestinian youth thought “there is widespread corruption in my country”. It is a feature of the crisis of the Palestinian people that is often ignored on the left – the fact that those who purport to ‘lead’ the Palestinian people are included among its exploiters and it is an issue that socialists must always address in dealing with answers to the ongoing neo-apartheid oppression by Israel.
Personal indebtedness and youth unemployment
It has been because of years on relentless austerity that so many young Arabs have found themselves in permanent debt. From ‘only’ 15 per cent reporting that they were in debt in the 2015 survey, the number today has more than doubled to 35 per cent. It is most common, according to the report, among youth in Syria (73 per cent), Jordan (70 per cent), Palestinian Territories (65 per cent) and Iraq (59 per cent) and the chief reasons are student loan debt, car loans, medical bills and home mortgages.
Making indebtedness worse, is the inability of young people to earn their way out of their predicament. The rate of youth unemployment in the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region is around 30 per cent, the highest of any large region in the world and all the signs are that this is getting worse, not better.
This year, while the survey reported that 87 per cent of Arabs youth were concerned about lack of jobs, half of them had no confidence in their governments being able to resolve the issue. According to the International Monetary Fund, five and a half million new workers join the region’s labour force every year, but there simply aren’t enough jobs being created to even keep pace with that increase. The Covid-19 epidemic by itself is likely to create a sharp uptick in unemployment.
Identity and religion
One set of questions in the survey asked about the ‘identity’ of young people. Not surprisingly, with the historic links to the main capitalist countries being those of colonial oppression and exploitation – in addition to mention modern wars and aggression – there is a strong feeling of national and cultural identity among young people.
Religion remains an important ethnic and cultural badge, but a large majority – 67 per cent – still believed that “religion plays too big a role in the Middle East”. Two thirds thought that the Arab world needed to “reform its religious institutions.”
Women’s rights
A set of questions were designed specifically related to the rights of women as opposed to those of men. Surprisingly, according to the report, nearly two in three young Arab women (64 per cent) said they have the same rights as men. This is one part of the report that is just not credible, skewed as it is by suspiciously favourable statistics from the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia.
Women have played a significant part in the movements against the former governments in Egypt and Sudan and in both cases, as a by-product of the revolts, reforms have been granted – at least in words – that empower women more than before. In Egypt, following the Arab Spring, hundreds of women spoke out publicly about sexual harassment, and this may have brought about some modest reforms. This August in Cairo, a bill was passed that granted women anonymity in sexual abuse cases, allowing more women to come forward with complaints about what was previously considered a’ taboo’ subject.
Likewise in Sudan, where women played a prominent role in the protest movement that overthrew the government of Al-Bashir, the new ‘transitional’ government has been forced to move towards tackling some of the injustices women face, criminalising female genital mutilation, for example.
To what extent these reforms will make a real difference or remain only a paper exercise remains to be seen. But women’s rights, including access to education, freedom from harassment, equal professional and job opportunities, will inevitably stand out as distinct issues in their own right, in the movements of Arab youth that will break out in the future.
All the social problems worsened by Covid
In every section of the Arab Youth report, it is clear that the problems of daily life –unemployment, indebtedness, insecurity and uncertainty – have become worse as a result of the pandemic, as is shown by the supplementary post-Covid survey. What that means is that as much as Arab youth sought answers to their everyday problems, they will now be looking even more desperately.
It is as a result of the never-ending battle against unemployment, corruption and debt, that so many young Arabs have considered moving overseas – and swelling the waves of migrations crossing Europe. When asked, 42 per cent of young Arabs said they have considered emigrating to another country, 15 per cent of them “actively”. Two in five potential migrants say they would leave their country permanently. Only one in three (32 per cent) said they would never leave, while one in four young Arabs said they have not considered migrating but “could do so in the future”.
Few choices: emigrate or protest
The overwhelming majority of young Arabs, of course, will not migrate. They will never have the opportunity nor the will. Most will stay and inevitably will find themselves clashing with their own governments: their police, security agencies and their thugs. Indeed, most of the young people surveyed in this report expect protests to get more frequent in the future.
“A majority of young people (86 per cent) in Libya, more than half in Tunisia and Yemen expect protests to hit their streets…A similar outlook prevails among young Arabs in Syria (46 per cent) and Palestine (44 per cent). More than one-third young Arabs in Egypt (40 per cent) and Jordan (39) too share the view that anti-government protests are likely in their country.”
“When asked what they think were the reasons for the social unrest” the report explains, rather unsurprisingly, “40 per cent cited corruption and bad governance”.
As it was in the Arab Spring, the youth movements of the future will be accelerated by the access to modern communications technology. The speed of disseminations of news, information, and the ease of organisation by mobile phone and social media technology are important factors that just didn’t exist ten or fifteen years ago. It is no accident that whenever there are serious movements onto the streets, the governments, long before they deploy riot police, attempt to shut down the internet, social media and phone connection. That is how all-pervasive digital technology is today.
200 million Arab youth will demand change
A word of warning must be added for anyone reading this report. Of the organisations sponsoring this regular Arab Youth research, most are based or have offices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is part of the Gulf Cooperation Council, dominated by Saudi Arabia. Not surprisingly, the GCC comes out well in the survey.
As I already have suggested, we have to take with a large pinch of salt the rather incredible suggestion that there is little corruption in the GCC countries, or that women there are largely satisfied with their ‘equal’ status with men. In almost every area of the questionnaire, the GCC comes out best of all the Arab states. There may be a grain of truth in that the oil wealth of the GCC states allows for a higher standard of living. But it is only a grain of truth, and when it comes to democratic rights, these are an exceptionally long way from being ‘model’ states.
Nevertheless, even bearing in mind that caveat, the Report on Arab Youth gives some devastating statistics, and for anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa, it is a mine of useful information.
Reading between the lines, however, something the report itself doesn’t do, the title might just turn out to be a bit tame. A Voice for Change doesn’t even faintly describe the earthquake that will come from the huge revolutionary movements of the more than 200 million young people in the Arab world in the coming years.
October 8, 2020
