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cable solutions to the problems and serve as a menace to easy access to the youngs-
ters’ right in the countries.
The key concern and wish of the young people in the Middle East is peace and stability
in the region. A focus on the future of social policies for youth undertakes the leading
role in the process of the development of society as the largest and vital sector in the
overall societal structure for the Middle East.
The Middle East and North Africa region lack national youth policies. This is due to the
structural factors such as inadequate knowledge in modern issues of youth and youth
programs and lack of effective institutional coordination approach as well as circums-
tantial conditions such as war, conflict and instability. There are just nine countries out
of 22 countries that have either youth policies or are still in the process of formulating
policies related to youth and their issues. For example, among the 14 ESCWA count-
ries, 5 countries have formulated national youth policies (Jordan, Bahrain, Palestine,
Egypt, Yemen), another 5 countries are in the process of formulating such policies
(UAE, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Lebanon). However, the rest of the countries (Sudan, Oman,
Kuwait, KSA) only tackle youth issues through their sectoral and national development
plans” (UNESCWA, 2010). In other words, most of the Middle East countries lack deve-
lopmental social services, which aims at developing young people and fail to help them
value their leisure time. At the same time, many countries in the region do not have a
clear youth policy or if they have policies they are not functional written policies. Youth
welfare has been limited in many countries to the actions of non-governmental orga-
nizations. This clearly marginalises and limits the possibilities for young people with
weakness in educational domains. The futility of higher education perceived by a lot of
young people and destroying of the infrastructure of the educational institution caused
by conflict has deprived many young people to continue their education.
The societies that suffer from the decline in secondary education among males is one
of the risk factors that lead to increase the risk of conflict. Hence education is one of
the important social strategies and policies that should be adopted to reduce the risk
of political violence and participation in conflict. To be more specific, education specifi-
cally designed for young males in the region (Barakat & Urdal, 2009). Youth, particularly
those who are not in school, are highly vulnerable to being victimized by violence and
involved in it (Sommers 2001; Sommers, 2006). Therefore, it is necessary for future go-
vernments to play different orientations to improve education and create employment
opportunities for young people. Nevertheless, no one will be able to succeed in strengt-
hening the human capacity among young people without achieving radical reforms and
greater participation in civil society. The experience from all over the world resulted to a
vast knowledge of the reasons for the success of development strategies and policies
of reform as well as the reasons for the lack of success.
