Educate boys, or they'll go to war | FP Passport - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Nov 09
  

  Robert Maguire

  education youth statistics demographics middleeast africa youth bulge violence war conflict reference

  • A World Bank research
    paper posted today finds that countries with a high proportion of young
    males with low levels of secondary education are significantly more conflict-prone.
  • "youth bulges"
  • 5 more annotations...
  • • Sub-Saharan Africa, as "the
      continent with the largest youth cohorts and the lowest levels of male secondary
      education, scoring on average nearly 30 percentage points lower than the world
      average."
    • In Syria,
      for example, males 14 years old and younger make up nearly 20 percent of the
      population. Only 39.1 percent of secondary school-aged students are enrolled in
      school, making it the 101st lowest-ranking country of 135 surveyed. In the long run, Syria is facing
      declining oil production and rapid population growth - a recipe for violent
      unrest.
    • The policy implications are clear. Programs that focus on
      primary education, like the U.N.'s Education
      for All and Millennium
      Development Goals
    • must
      be more support for programs like the World Bank's own Secondary
      Education in Africa initiative.
    • The total cost of a secondary education in Kenya is estimated at $6,865.
      A 2007 Oxfam report
      found that on average a "war, civil war, or insurgency shrinks an African economy
      by 15 percent," and conflict causes the continent to lose about $18 billion a
      year. You do the math.

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