Many Yemeni youth face social exclusion, whereby they are cut off from the resources and institutions that could assist them in their transition to adulthood. Youth exclusion in Yemen is highly gendered and regionalized. Females and rural residents are much more likely to be excluded than males and urban residents. Moreover, this exclusion is multifaceted and generally affects other sectors of life.
For example, youth who receive inadequate schooling have trouble finding paid work, which can thereby limit their ability to purchase housing, get married and become independent adults.
Exclusion is also interdependent: exclusion manifested during early stages of the transition can reinforce exclusion at later stages.
Recent historical developments in Yemen contributed to the prevalence and depth of youth exclusion.
Soon after the 1990 unification between North and South Yemen, the country suffered vast repercussions from the Gulf War, including the mass repatriation of almost a million Yemeni migrants and the cutoff of much international aid. These events damaged Yemen’s economy and threw the country into a period of turmoil and unrest. Rampant poverty and conflict created an unstable environment for youth, many of whom were already marginalized.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East region and one of the poorest in the world. Its population, already overwhelmingly young, is expanding rapidly, creating an explosion in the number of youth aged 15 to 29. A large youth population can provide the ideas and manpower necessary to foster economic growth and stimulate social development — but only if adequate resources and institutions are in place to help them do so. With a dwindling supply of natural resources, low levels of human development, high levels of poverty, and policies and institutions that work against youth instead of for them, Yemen faces significant challenges in helping youth reach their full potential.
The situation in Yemen is particularly challenging because of the twin deficits that the country faces in both human development and natural resources. Yemen ranks 138th out of 179 countries and territories on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index and 148th on combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment (UNDP 2008). Yemen also faces one of the largest gender gaps in human development in the world. For instance, in gross primary enrollment rates it ranks as the country with the fifth largest gender gap in the world (UNDP 2007). These human development challenges are compounded by severe limits on essential natural resources, such as water and arable land, for a rapidly growing population that is still predominantly rural.
Education
Youth in Yemen face significant educational challenges. Women and rural residents have been particularly excluded from educational gains. A fifth of youth have never enrolled in school, with never-enrollment being particularly problematic among rural girls. Delayed entry into school is also a significant problem, with only 20 percent of children entering the education system at the recommended age of six. Moreover, most students, again especially female students and rural residents, drop out before finishing basic education.
Moreover, youth who are able to obtain adequate amounts of schooling are constrained by the poor quality of education in Yemen. Teaching and testing methods in Yemen encourage rote memorization. Much learning occurs in inadequate facilities, such as unsafe school building, tents, caves or open-air classrooms.
Employers complain that graduates lack critical cognitive, management, language and computer skills that are necessary in the workplace but not taught in Yemeni public schools. Unemployment is high across all education levels, with exceptionally high levels for “middle-educated” men with primary through secondary education and highly educated young women.
Livelihood
This term encompass the different factors that affect young people’s incomes and work arrangements. The study shows that young women work more hours than young men, yet that young men are much more likely to participate in paid work. Women who do engage in paid work earn higher wages than men on average, mainly because they are a highly selected group and therefore tend to be much more educated. Women who do this kind of work are found almost exclusively in the non-governmental organization (NGO) and government sectors. Men in urban areas work long hours, as do male migrants from rural areas and well-educated women. In Yemen, it is common for both males and females to work while they are attending school—oftentimes compromising their educational attainment and quality of learning.
The demographics of households have important impacts on the well-being of youth. Young women living with their in-laws assume a disproportionate share of the domestic and unpaid work burden, with daughters-in-law working 11 percent more in unpaid work than the other daughters in the household.
Internal migration is also an important phenomenon among youth. Internal migrants earn lower wages on average than nonmigrants, but they also work longer hours so that their total incomes parallel those of non-migrants.
Urbanization seems to be the major reason for internal migration, with 35 percent of urban males and 60 percent of males in Sana’a City being migrants from rural areas and smaller cities.
The usage of qat (Catha edulis), a plant that acts as a stimulant when chewed, is common in Yemen and has important implications for young people’s incomes and use of leisure time. Different estimates cite 50 to 85 percent of men using qat on a regular basis and 30 to 60 percent of women doing so.
Men who chew qat spend about 20 percent of their incomes on the drug, with wealthier men spending slightly more than poor ones.
Family formation
Rural women are particularly prone to early marriage in Yemen. In general, women marry earlier than men, and rural residents marry earlier than urban residents. More than half of young women in Yemen marry while they are still teenagers and thereby become excluded from the benefits of higher education and wage work. Most young brides bear children early, putting themselves at risk of maternal mortality and putting their children at risk of dying prematurely. The young age of marriage and childbearing has also buoyed the persistently high fertility rate in Yemen. Although the fertility rate began to decline in the 1990s, the total fertility rate (TFR) for Yemen from 1998 to 2003 was 6.2 children per woman, which is the highest fertility rate in the Middle East and North Africa region (Arab Family Health Survey 2003).
Urban Yemeni males are beginning to suffer from the “waithood” phenomenon that has plagued other modernizing Middle Eastern societies, which manifests itself in involuntary delays in marriage. These delays are driven by education-induced increases in expectations about the standards of living to be achieved within marriage that are often unmatched by the economic opportunities young men face in the labor market. Men who do marry young often bring their brides into their parental household, indicating that getting married may not signal true independence.
Young women in Yemen still struggle to receive adequate reproductive healthcare. According to the
2003 Arab Family Health Survey (AFHS 2003), less than 40 percent of young women had ever used any type of contraception, with the youngest brides being the least likely to use contraception. Furthermore, many women—especially women residing in rural areas—report that high costs, a lack of female physicians, and long distances to clinics and other health facilities impede their access to prenatal care
Yemen has attempted to enact policies that promote improved access to reproductive health services for women, but this sensitive issue has been met with sometimes impassioned political debate and religiously and culturally-based opposition.
Policy implications
The Yemeni government is aware of the enormous challenges that it faces in human development, especially as it affects its youth population. A major sign of this awareness is the fact that Yemen is one of the only Arab countries to have issued a National Youth Strategy. However, due to major resource and financial constraints and even more limited institutional capacity, this strategy has not been fully implemented.
We set forth three broad recommendations to guide policymakers in dealing with issues affecting youth inclusion in Yemen and argue for greater development assistance to help Yemen overcome its twin human development and resource deficits. First, we advocate for youth policies to take a holistic approach—addressing the various aspects of young people’s transitions to adulthood together rather than tackling each problem or sector on its own. Second, we recommend that policymakers focus on improving outcomes for women, especially those in rural areas. Finally, we suggest that policies be carefully tailored to take into account the microeconomic factors that affect youth outcomes, such as the distance women and girls must travel to attend school or access health care or the obstacles they face because schools, health facilities, and workplaces are not perceived as safe spaces for women.
Yemen faces many challenges in promoting youth inclusion, but focusing on assisting this important group will have positive benefits for the country for years to come. We make a strong plea for Yemen to receive greater amounts of development assistance both from Western donors as well as from its oil rich neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula. The human development and natural resource challengs Yemen faces are daunting and it is unlikely that Yemen will be able to address them on its own, given its dwindling oil wealth. A large injection of development assistance on the part of Yemen’s richer.
The way forward
Yemen faces enormous challenges in human development that especially affect its youth population.
The government has signaled its awareness of these issues by being the only Arab country to have issued a National Youth Strategy. However, due to major resource and financial constraints and even more limited institutional capacity, this strategy has not been fully implemented. The following three broad recommendations can guide policymakers in dealing with issues affecting youth inclusion in Yemen.
In addition, the role of development assistance is critical in helping Yemen overcome its twin human development and natural resource deficits.
First, use a holistic approach in assisting youth. As we have mentioned throughout this paper, the challenges facing youth are multi-dimensional and interdependent.
Instead of focusing on the single dimensions of youth exclusion, the government of Yemen and international donors should focus on strategies that assist youth in multiple ways and across multiple markets.
Second, improve access for women and girls. Women are often implicitly and explicitly discouraged from fully participating in the public sphere in Yemen.
Education, health care, and the labor market need to become more conducive to female participation.
Schools need to be made safer, more accessible, and, in general, more girl-friendly environments.
More female doctors are needed to provide women with adequate health care, and firms must increase the hiring rate of women and strive to create more female-friendly work places. Policymakers should focus not just on the number of women participating but also the percentage of women who are leaders and managers in these fields.
Third, focus on micro-institutional factors. The government of Yemen has focused on large-scale projects such as building schools or health facilities.
While there is no doubt that Yemen needs more of these facilities, indiscriminate building of facilities will fail to assist many of Yemen’s socially excluded youth unless the rules of the game change. On one hand, parents and youth must get the correct signals about what it takes to succeed in Yemeni society and must be empowered to act on these signals.
On the other hand, service providers must get the right incentives to respond to the needs and wishes of their clients. This implies a greater degree of competition among service providers and a reward system that depends on performance.
Finally, given the magnitude of the challenges facing Yemen and its twin deficits in human and natural resources, the country will need to receive considerable assistance from the outside world to ensure a brighter future for its young population. This assistance should come from Western donors as well as from Yemen’s oil-rich neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula. A large injection of development assistance on the part of Yemen’s richer neighbors would be an excellent investment in regional stability. The neighboring Gulf countries should also consider adopting more open migration policies with respect to Yemeni labor to relieve some of the intense pressure on Yemen’s limited arable land resources and its overcrowded urban labor markets.
About the Middle East youth initiative
The mission of this initiative is to develop and implement a regional action plan for promoting the economic and social inclusion of young people in the Middle East.
The Middle East Youth Initiative’s objective is to accelerate the international community’s ability to better understand and respond to the changing needs of young people in the Middle East. By creating an international alliance of academics, policymakers, youth leaders and leading thinkers from the private sector and civil society, we aim to develop and promote a progressive agenda of youth inclusion.
The Middle East Youth Initiative was launched in July 2006 by the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution in partnership with the Dubai School of Government.
The initiative blends activities in an attempt to bridge the divide between thinkers and practitioners and utilizes robust research as a foundation for effective policy and programs. The initiative has three complementary pillars: Research and Policy: Pathways to Inclusion, Advocacy and Networking: Creating Vital Connections and Practical Action: Life-Changing Impact.