Egypt's Human Development Report, this year devoted to young people, reveals the opportunities and social hardships facing the country's younger generations, finds Ahmed Abu Ghazala Youth in Egypt: Building our Future is the title of the Egypt Human Development Report (EHDR) 2010, issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). As the title of this year's EHDR suggests, the 2010 report focuses on young people in Egypt, including the challenges they face, what the government is doing to help them, and what recommendations might be made to help overcome young people's problems. Egypt's youth, defined in the report as the 18 to 29 age group, is estimated at some 20 million people, constituting almost 23.5 per cent of the population as a whole. These figures suggest that the country's "youth bulge" -- in other words, the high percentage of younger people in the total population -- has reached a peak, and this has determined the choice of Egypt's young people as the subject of the report since they will affect the nation's welfare as a whole in the years to come. In addition to the EHDR's customary dependence upon detailed surveys in presenting information, this year's edition also introduces a new Youth Well-Being Index (YWBI) specifically tailored to cover issues affecting young people and looking at 10 different dimensions, including education, employment, health, nutrition and levels of youth poverty. Young people were involved in drawing up the report, expressing their needs and views in first-person terms. The report gives information on a plethora of issues, among the most important of which are education, unemployment and health. EDUCATION: According to Heba Handoussa, lead author of the report, the youth demographic bulge has now reached a peak, and this puts pressure on the educational system. The report focuses on secondary and tertiary education in Egypt, in order to find ways of improving education as a means towards young people's integration into society and enhancing their economic competitiveness and social values. The educational system needs to be able to handle the 22 per cent of the population that is of school age (six to 17 years), as well as the further 10.5 per cent aged between 18 and 22, of which one third is enrolled in the higher-education system. However, as the report reveals, access to education, particularly quality education, is affected by several factors. "27 per cent of young people aged 18-29 do not complete basic education (17 per cent have dropped out of school before completing basic education and 10 per cent have never enrolled in school)," the report suggests. Socio-economic status and family background are identified as main factors determining educational achievement. "Children whose families are in the middle and upper wealth quintiles are more likely to perform better in certificate examinations and to join the higher-education system," the authors write. Students from the lowest income quintile form only 4.3 per cent of students in higher education. Young people in rural areas face additional problems, the report says. "Rural areas have a staggering 80 per cent of those who have never enrolled in school," the authors say, and gender also plays a role in enrolment, with females forming 82 per cent of young people who are not enrolled in education. However, gender does not predict which students will fail to complete their education. According to the report, one of the roles of education is to enhance civic engagement, and there should be clear links between academic curricula and real-world questions in order to boost students' engagement in the community. The need for such links is urgent in Egypt, the authors argue, since the country faces many complex social challenges. The report praises efforts made by Cairo University through its Hepatitis C Virus Awareness and Combat Programme and award-winning Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Programme. However, there is still a need for further programmes, the report says, that will promote students' involvement in community life. Educational competitiveness is a means towards developing the labour force's knowledge, skills and innovative potential. According to the report, one major impediment to achieving these goals lies in Egypt's mediocre higher-education enrolment figures. "University graduates constitute about 12.2 per cent of the work force in Egypt, while holders of higher diplomas, MA and PhD Degrees, constitute another 0.4 per cent of the labour force," the authors write. Other impediments include a high preference for administrative careers and associated forms of education. In the academic year 2007/2008, some 64 per cent of university students were enrolled in social studies, while only some 17.6 per cent of students were enrolled in medicine, engineering, science or pharmacy. There was also a minority of students in applied sciences, constituting just some 15.2 per cent of students. The quality of education needs to be improved. However, the satisfaction of employers with young employees is judged generally fair (66 per cent), though some 41 per cent of employers surveyed assessed the ability of young graduates to apply their knowledge as limited. EMPLOYMENT: The current youth bulge in Egypt has been associated with a curtailment of government hiring of secondary and university graduates, the insufficient expansion of the formal private sector, and mediocre educational quality more suitable for administrative careers than for skills valued by the market. "Faced with poor prospects of getting formal jobs in either the public or private sectors, young people are either forced to accept any jobs they can get in the informal economy, or, as is increasingly the case for young women, to abandon the idea of participating in the labour market altogether," says the report. The report further notes that the unemployment rate used in policy circles and the media is an inadequate measure of how young people are actually faring on the labour market. Unemployment is defined as not working any hours during a given week, while actively searching for a job. According to the report, there needs to be a broader definition of unemployment to take in the "discouraged unemployed" -- in other words, people who are available and ready for work, but are not currently engaged in search activities. The official unemployment rate for the 15-29 age group declined significantly from 25.6 per cent in 1998 to 16.9 per cent in 2006, before dropping to 16.7 per cent in 2009. Nevertheless, the report compares these figures to broader measures of unemployment, suggesting that these figures may not indicate true drops in unemployment, but rather people leaving the registers as a result of "discouragement rather than an increase in employment rates". On another measure of broad unemployment, rates fell from 28.8 per cent in 1998 to 19.1 per cent in 2006, yet increased to 22.6 per cent in 2009. Some 6.2 per cent of the labour force in 2009 was made up of "discouraged workers who have quit searching for work", which is "up from less than three per cent discouraged unemployment in 1998 and 2006". One explanation for declining rates of broad unemployment from 1998 to 2006 is an improvement in youth employment opportunities before the recent financial crisis. Gender is an important factor in employment. While young men end up in some kind of employment by age 29, with employment rates reaching some 92 per cent, women cannot expect to achieve the same level of employment, with only 15 per cent of women being in formal employment by age 24. This rate stops rising after 24, since "women increasingly transition into marriage." The maximum participation of women in the work force is reached at age 24 at 23 per cent. These figures suggest "that while most unemployed men eventually find jobs, a large fraction of unemployed women never actually become employed, but simply move from unemployment to economic inactivity," the report says. One paradoxical feature of unemployment in Egypt is the fact that unemployment rates for less- educated young people are very low. According to the report, young people having some higher education expect to find jobs in the formal sector, and they prefer to remain unemployed while continuing to search for jobs. On the other hand, young people without the same educational attainments enter the informal economy "right after or even before dropping out of school". Another important factor affecting employment rates in Egypt is the lack of quality education, which would supply more graduates having the skills needed for the global market place. HEALTH: Health concerns among young people are the result of environmental factors, such as pollution, social and behavioural factors, such as female genital mutilation, early marriage and malnutrition, and infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and hepatitis. The report includes a survey of how young people perceive their health, with a high figure of 62 per cent of both sexes still considering "it important to circumcise girls". Among youth respondents, 95 per cent considered themselves free of any ailments, with the remaining five per cent listing various diseases. Anaemia was at the top of reported diseases, followed by respiratory, rheumatic and heart diseases. Other cases included headaches, diabetes, kidney, liver and skin-related diseases. Mediocre knowledge of serious diseases like AIDS, with only some seven per cent of women and 18 per cent of men having detailed knowledge of it, and hygiene, with only 27 per cent of women and 19 per cent of men having received information about safe injections, was also revealed by the report. Only "39 per cent of women and 37 per cent of men had information on the adverse effects of second-hand smoke in the six months preceding the survey," the report states. The report praises government efforts to promote health through "preventive and curative interventions directed at the first years of life," these being managed by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood. It also praises the contributions of the National Council for Youth and Sports in creating youth centres and community playgrounds. It provides recommendations for improving these programmes. Social and mental disorders are also discussed, with estimates suggesting that some 1.3 million young people may suffer from different kinds of depression. Suicide attempts are estimated to be around 3.5 for every 100,000, though figures are hard to come by since families tend to hide suicide attempts for cultural, social and religious reasons. Substance abuse is considered a serious problem, the report including a study showing youngsters as having the "highest onset of substance abuse." Abused substances reported include nicotine, alcohol, hash, stimulant drugs and tranquilisers. Under the title Women: A Special Case, the report discusses social problems that can give rise to psychological disorders among women. Depressive disorders were found among some 30 per cent of women, with 12.6 per cent being found among men. Social problems include forced dependency, cultural double standards in marriage and sexual relations, gender and domestic violence -- the report suggests that some 32 per cent of women have been abused by their husbands -- and sexual harassment, with some 48 per cent of women, veiled or not, reporting being subjected at some point in their lives to sexual harassment. Overall, the EHDR should be considered as a wake-up call for policy-makers and society as a whole. As far as the youth bulge is concerned, the effects of this started to be felt in 1995, the report suggests, though the country's large number of young people "if well guided, will propel young human capital into a significant factor in the growth and development of the country as a whole." "On the other hand, if badly managed, the consequences become poorer skill and job outcomes, and therefore prolonged periods of unemployment, a fragile understanding of citizenship and its responsibilities, and a greater dependency on family and state prior to and after marriage."
