2019 Activities

Under the Umbrella of Aman Coalition and Sharek Youth Forum; Legitimate youth claims deposited to the Youth Summit to seek solutions

Under the Umbrella of Aman Coalition and Sharek Youth Forum; Legitimate youth claims deposited to the Youth Summit to seek solutions

Youth Ring the Bell: Horrific Facts and Statistics

Ramallah – Two-hundred and fifty young people concluded the Youth Summit Today, under the theme of: “What Do Youth Want?” reiterating their demands to implement the strategic goals, policies and interventions in the Strategic Cross-sectoral National Plan for Youth 2017-2022. They focused on socio-political participation via the formation of a national team with youth representatives to devise a clear action plan with realistic time-frame and budgets. Convening youth stressed on the need to enhance the investment culture in Palestine through joint private, public and civil sector efforts in coordination with relevant institutions. They expressed the need to guide the youth toward starting their own enterprises, reiterating the need to reactivate volunteer work as a genuine social value in Palestine. To them, volunteerism cannot be associated to funding programs and should be regulated in clear laws that protect and honor volunteers through a set of incentives.

The Youth Summit is the fruit of cooperation between AMAN Coalition for Integrity and Accountability and Sharek Youth Forum to empower youth with the concepts of integrity, accountability and social responsibility. it resulted from six-month efforts that organized the School of Integrity in July 2018 and the National Accountability Day in October as well as a number of trainings and activities to enable the youth to organize and run the Summit. Ms. Ola Awad, President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), addressed the audience presenting alarming figures and statistics on the situation of youth in Palestine.

Other papers were presented by the youth themselves on statistics and facts and the challenges they face. They referred to the alarming rates of participation and representation of youth in decision-making positions where they represent less than 1%. Data of PCBS from 2017 showed that 0.7% of youth are employed in legislative or senior administration positions, being 0.8% in the West Bank and 0.7% in the Gaza Strip. Results also showed that 57% of youth do not intend to register for elections or political participation in general. Furthermore, 24% are active in politics while 13% participate in political parties. The youth papers in the summit covered the following points:

Call to involve youth in the elections

In citing the challenges that they face, youth proposed solutions to overcome their political under-representation. They suggested the democratic structure in civil society organizations needs to be developed via a set of laws and regulations, sensitive to youth needs. This includes referring to youth in these organizations’ bylaws and action plans to enable the youth to participate in policy making so as to prepare them for the public arena through participation in local, legislative and presidential elections and decision-making positions, as prescribed in PLO and PNA laws. Indeed, civil society organizations cannot boost youth in official institutions without first involving them in their proper activity and organization.

The paper stressed the importance of raising the awareness of youth of both genders to be more involved in the political field out of their key role in building their societies. The youth said it was the responsibility of the civil society organizations and political parties to support the Palestinian youth achieve their political rights prescribed in the Palestinian political system. They should adopt programs to raise the awareness of the youth to involve them in an informed way in the political arena.

The paper also proposed that different organizations support leadership practice in running for elections whether at student level in the elections of the councils of students’ unions or in local elections or elections in different organizations and associations. As such, these organizations can provide youth with the necessary experience to become responsibly involved in the political life. Different organizations must practice their oversight role over the activities of the government and be the true voice of the public grassroots, as represented by the youth.

Youth called for building a participatory institutional strategic plan, which is managed on regular rather than seasonal basis and with a pre-allocated budget. The strategy needs to involve civil society organizations, mainly those working on youth development to involve them in decision-making and enforcement of the strategic goals, policies and interventions of the national cross-sectoral strategic plan for the youth 2017-2022. The focus needs to be on community and political participation via the formation of a national team with youth representatives to devise a clear action plan with the necessary time frame and budgets. The legal framework also needs to be developed to facilitate youth participation in public life while political parties and civil society organizations should provide ample representation space for the youth including in their boards. The political parties law needs to be amended to serve the youth more and lobbying needs to be activated to promulgate the law. Furthermore, youth must engage in community accountability actions to prepare themselves for an active sociopolitical role in the society. This includes ratifying the draft law on access to information and securing a youth quota in different political representation levels.

Dr. Ola Awad, President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

Ms. Ola Awad started her presentation by alluding to the complex challenges facing the Palestinian people, focusing on the demand-supply gap in the labor market. She referred to the non-matching of the outcome of the Palestinian educational system with the needs of the local labor market stressing that the situation is not new, but rather accumulative of several decades. The main causes of this situation are inflated supply in the Palestinian labor market, stereotypical choice of academic specializations, over-saturated labor market in some academic specializations, and non-matching of academic qualification with the job requirements in the labor market.

Ms. Awad concluded with a number of advice to the youth, including changing the common choices of academic specialization and make informed choices based on analysis of future needs of the labor market. She reiterated the importance of focusing on applied skills and capacities for easier integration of youth in employment while encouraging youth to opt for entrepreneurial projects especially with the oversaturation of the public sector and weak private sector structure. Ms. Awad alluded to anumber of ideas needed for the labor market in Palestine including creation of agricultural processing industry, development of the tourism sector and promotion of touristic sites in Palestine together with offering quality services and facilities to visitors from abroad. She also mentioned raising awareness of exportation of inexpensive technical services and focus on industrial investment in alternative energy, recycling and oils plants.

Unemployment among youth graduates exceeded 55%

Addressing economic empowerment and entrepreneurship, youth from the Economic Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Team presented the challenges confronting the youth. They pointed out that female youth are mostly employed in the service sector (16.8% male compared to 65.2% female). The youth also talked about the severe unemployment situation, which according to an UNCTAD report of 2018, citing PCBS statistics of 2017, reached 55.8% among graduates (aged 15-29 years) with an intermediate diploma or higher (37.8% for male and 72.0% for female). Graduates of educational sciences and teachers’ training scored the highest unemployment rate of 69.6% (being 47.5% for males and 76.2% for females).

Youth called for boosting investment culture in Palestine through joint government, private and civil sectors coordination and efforts with relevant organizations to raise investment awareness and train new graduates to direct them to launching their own projects. They invited the government to establish an incubator for start-ups and youth enterprises and provide them with a set of incentives and facilities. They also called for an assessment of the higher education programs in Palestine to usher into the future and shut down outdated areas of study to leave room for new specializations that match the labor market. The reiterated youth should be directed to productive sectors like agriculture, industry and tourism in their startups. Furthermore, they underlined the necessity to operate the employment fund with more realistic and adapted mechanisms and to redraft the programs of the Ministry of Labor to serve youth employment and promote local employment council. They focused on coordination with institutions working with business and entrepreneurship development.

Volunteerism, a genuine value of the Palestinian Society

In another paper, youth addressed volunteerism and how it retreated in Palestine as social upbringing organizations no longer focus on enhancing this value. Furthermore, external funding associated volunteer work to financial gains and weakened volunteerism following weaker funding.

The youth wished to redeem volunteer work in civil society organizations without linking such work to funding programs. They wished for clear laws to regulate volunteer work and honor youth volunteers through a system of incentives. It is necessary to boost volunteer work to help youth acquire life skills and experiences to become prepared for the labor market, public life and increase their opportunities for political representation.

Youth proposed to involve general and higher education establishments in programs connected to the educational courses while networking with the media to continually document volunteer activities and promote volunteer work. They suggested that official, civil and private institutions support youth community initiatives
Claims of disabled youth.

The intervention by the representatives of youth with disabilities explained the procedures needed to involve and integrate people with disabilities in different organizations to transform such places into inclusive bodies that guarantee people with disabilities an equal opportunity of active participation. They highlighted the importance of adapting institutions from all sectors, whether women’s organizations, youth, human rights or civil, public or partisan parties to facilitate participation of youth with disabilities. They explained that such procedure would lead to a good public image of such organizations and would help the society develop at all levels.

Representatives of youth with disabilities called for organizing activities and procedures in the organizations adapted for their use, so that they can guarantee equal, dignified, safe and free access of all citizens. They insisted on applying the 5% quota of employment of people with disabilities in posts consistent with their wishes, abilities, choices and individual differences including in unions, political parties, PLO agencies. They also recommended to train at least one employee on sign language in every public institution and to educate and train volunteers and employees on the principles, criteria and methods of inclusion. It is also necessary to adopt policies that promote justice and dignified treatment while banning all forms of discrimination against people with disabilities, especially in political parties and popular organizations.

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