Opening Remarks by the UN Resident Coordinator in Jordan Regional Workshop on Youth Participation in Peace and Security in MENA

Your Excellency Dr. Raed Al-Adwan, Minister of Youth of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Your Excellency Mr. Luciano Pezzotti, Ambassador of Italy in Jordan

Your Excellency Mr. Felipe Paullier, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs

Ms. Maria Cristina Rosaria Pisani, President of the Italian Youth Council

Distinguished participants and colleagues, 

Across the Arab States, we are witnessing one of the most significant demographic moments of our time. Sixty percent of the region’s population is under the age of 30, the largest youth population globally. This situation presents major challenges and unique opportunities.  If empowered, the young people of this region can become a powerful driver of peace, prosperity, and sustainable development.

Today, however, many young women and men face overlapping crises: persistent unemployment, disrupted learning, conflict and displacement, climate stresses, and shrinking civic space. These pressures are real and urgent. But despite them, young people across the region continue to show remarkable resilience, creativity, and an unwavering commitment to shaping a better future. 

Our responsibility, as the UN system and partners, is to match their ambition with the right policies, investments, and institutional pathways.

At the regional level, the UN is helping drive exactly this shift. The UN’s Learning to Earning initiative has brought together ministers, policymakers, and youth leaders from across the Arab world. It secured reform commitments from 13 countries, focused on modernizing education, expanding multiple learning pathways, and scaling the green and digital skills that will shape the jobs of tomorrow. Similarly, the TRANSFORM-Arab programme is helping countries extend social protection to young people too often left in the “missing middle,” including by linking humanitarian cash transfers with long-term, nationally owned systems.

What is most encouraging is that across the region, these efforts are being matched by national leadership and youth-led innovation. In Iraq, youth are re-entering education at scale, while others are pioneering climate solutions through the Rafidain Green Business Camp. In Syria, UN partners and the Ministry of Youth and Sports have co-developed a national youth vision and action plan aligned with the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, proof that meaningful youth engagement is possible in all contexts.

And in Jordan, which helped champion UNSCR 2250 globally, we now see the launch of the country’s first National Plan for Youth, Peace and Security. Nationwide youth consultations, a major national youth survey, and rising youth voter turnout all reflect a new generation claiming its role in shaping public life.

Across the Gulf, the scale of youth climate engagement—from hundreds of young volunteers at COP16 in Riyadh to youth delegates shaping global negotiations—shows that the region is starting to unlock the full potential of its youngest citizens.

And at the intergovernmental level, the Arab Strategy for Youth, Peace and Security, launched with the League of Arab States, and the GCC’s Joint Youth Work framework are sending an important signal: youth are not a separate agenda. 

Youth leadership is central to the region’s peace, development, and climate priorities.

Looking ahead, the path forward is clear. 

First, we must institutionalize youth participation, not as a gesture but as a governance principle. Young people should be at the table where decisions are made: in peace processes, climate action, digital transformation, and national development planning. 

Second, we must invest in future-ready skills. Green transitions and digital transformations are reshaping economies. Young people must have access to the skills, tools, and opportunities to thrive within them. 

Third, we must support youth-led organizations and grassroots innovation. The region is full of youth networks contributing to solving problems with creativity and courage; our job is to ensure they have the resources, platforms, and enabling environments to scale their impact.

Above all, we must recognize that governments in the Arab States have the opportunity to leverage and channel their youth to drive change and innovation, building social cohesion, innovating on climate action, transforming learning pathways, and expanding civic space. 

Our task, collectively, is to ensure that their leadership is not the exception, but the norm. 

If we succeed, the region’s demographic moment will become a demographic dividend, delivering more peaceful, more resilient, and more prosperous societies for generations to come.

Thank you.