In particular, the crisis is deepest for women in the workplace.
Just like the lack of toilets in schools have become a major reason for girls to drop out, the lack of basic facilities in the workplace become an exclusionary device for the woman worker.
Transportation — or lack of it — is an equally cruel barrier for women.
The final ‘E’ is meaningful engagement: the belief amongst the young that they have a voice in the most important decisions that impact their lives.
It is clear from our research that the young in Pakistan do not believe that they do. It is even more clear that they are desperate to find ways to make their voices heard.
The context, however, does not make things easier.
Along with my team, I visited Peshawar literally days after the horrendous APS terror attack. As we spoke to young people in the terror-stricken city, two things became very obvious.
First, this was a generation that had grown up with violence and insecurity.
Second, in too many recent terrorist attacks it is the young who do the killing and it is also the young who do the dying.
Even as things become better, the scars of this legacy will not heal easy.
Also evident is the fact that the intolerance, doubt and distrust that defines society at large has been passed on to our young, even compounded amongst some segments of our youth.
Within this context, the space for meaningful engagement is even more constrained.
On the positive side, however, are examples of entrepreneurial energy — for business as well as social causes — that find their way to sunshine across all geographies and classes.
The invention of the designer naan. The introduction of women-focused pink rickshaws. The spontaneous blossoming of Dewar-i-Meharbani across all major cities in Pakistan. App development sprouting everywhere.
The avenues for meaningful engagement by the young may be constrained, but the desire to engage is palpable.
The challenges in education, employment and engagement for our youth are, indeed, monumental. But they are not insurmountable.
There is no single silver bullet that can magically cure all. But there are a multitude of small steps that can add up to shift the direction of negative trends.
In our report, we collect 101 such ideas that come from young people themselves.
They reflect a clear sense that our youth have something to say, and we should be listening to them.
The single most important thing that policy can deliver for the young, is to open up the space in which the they can lead and chart their own course; to enable and empower them to unleash the potential of a young Pakistan.
Dr. Adil Najam is the founding Dean of the Pardee School of Global Affairs at Boston University and was the former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He is the lead author of the about-to-be-released Pakistan National Human Development Report (NHDR).
Published in Dawn, EOS, April 29th, 2018
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