Country/Date: Mali/South Sudan, July 2015
Partner: Knowledge Platform on Security and Rule of Law
Local research for youth employment
Identified barriers and enabling factors to use local research capacity for youth employment donor programming. Organised workshops with donors, NGOs, researchers and youth in Juba (South Sudan), Bamako (Mali) and Beirut (Lebanon). Led workshop in Bamako in French and co-organised strategic seminars on youth employment programming and local research in The Hague (29 May 2015) and London at the Dutch embassy (on 25 June 2015, see blog report by Integrity) and contributed to the final report.
International actors recognize the need to gather better country-level data about the connection between unemployment and youth participation in violence in fragile and conflict affected environments. National researchers provide a nuanced understanding of how to define youth (which varies widely across countries) and how to speak with respondents about such a sensitive topic. In this project, with workshops in Bamako, Juba and Beirut, youth employment served to focus the discussion among a diverse group of participants and lend a more practical bent to the workshop in Mali. It also encouraged members of Malian youth groups to become vocal participants in the debate.
This report was prepared by Marije Balt, Sara Habachi (Integrity) and Alex Martins (Integrity).