MADRID (AFP) — Qatar announced a 100-million-dollar initial investment Tuesday in a new scheme aimed at combating the "alarming" levels of youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa.
The announcement was made at the Alliance of Civilizations Forum, a new initiative aimed at promoting cross-cultural understanding, by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, the wife of the Emir of Qatar.
"The best counter narrative to the prevailing tales of clash, violence and despair is action," she told the opening session of the two-day conference in Madrid.
She said the unemployment rate among young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was "particularly alarming."
"To fail these people would be a terrible mistake. Lack of opportunity and economic marginalisation can lead to frustration and loss of hope... If we act now we can turn this around," she said.
The Emir of Qatar is therefore putting 100 million dollars (67 million euros) into an initiative called Silatech, or "your connection" in Arabic, to combat the problem by connecting young people to businesses and employment, she said.
"We require a multi-faceted, innovative strategy that engages the public and private sectors along with civil society. And this is exactly what Silatech intends to do," Sheikha Mozah said.
Silatech has the support of International Labour Organisation and the World Bank Global Partnership for Youth Investment.
The chairman of Silatech's organising team, Rick Little, said the aim was create 100 million jobs over the next 20 years.
"To address this 100-million problem we need some very bold imaginative, innovative strategies," he told a news conference.
While Qatar has made the initial founding pledge, "we hope and expect that many others will join them in this initiative -- foundations, companies, multilaterals, bilaterals".
A summit will be held in Doha in mid-2008 "when many of the partners will come together and announce their commitments," he said.
A Silatech statement said the summit would also announce the names of five countries in the MENA region where pilot schemes would be launched, as well as the organisation's five-year strategy.
Around 350 people from 63 countries are attending the UN's Alliance of Civilizations Forum, which aims to bridge the divide between people of different cultures.
"By investing in our youth we are investing in the security and development of our nations, and only secure nations can build alliances based on mutual respect and common objectives," Sheikha Mozah said.
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