Young people in the Arab world share the priorities of many of their peers around the world as they struggle to deal with the high cost of living, the severe shortage of jobs, and the search for higher education. These very personal aspirations are what the leaders in the Arab world need to address in order to satisfy most of the aspirations of their young people.
The results of the third Arab Youth Survey were published yesterday, and show that young Arabs want more democracy as a major priority, but they also find their traditional values extremely important. For example, 94 per cent of Iraqis and 91 per cent of Bahrainis said that "traditional values mean a lot to me, and ought to be preserved for generations to come". This is a very important fact to remember as the troops go into Bahrain, and as the politicians seek a political solution to the continuing unrest there.
But this respect for traditional values has not stopped the uprisings in the Arab world from having a powerful effect on the attitudes of young people, who have become more confident and substantially more liberal. Asda'a Burson-Marsteller went back to resurvey their samples after the uprisings had started and found that those who described themselves as liberal had increased sharply in February 2011 to 51 per cent compared with 20 per cent in January. And this was matched by a sharp decrease in those who said that they had no political views, from 25 per cent to 6 per cent.
These aspirations are what the Arab political systems need to be able to satisfy, and it will be important that the new governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and any new policies put forward in other Arab states, bear in mind that the vast majority of young Arabs seek a more secure lifestyle, allowing for more personal growth, in a more transparent political system.
