Leaving no one behind requires addressing rising inequality within countries and addressing the multidimensional nature of inequality beyond income: across genders, ages, geographies, disabilities, class, religions, and in access to resources and opportunities. Youth inequality is particularly acute within the Arab African region, as demonstrated by the region having the highest youth unemployment of any region in the world. If this is not addressed, it risks triggering a lost generation and massive social discontent.

This project intends to build upon recent engagements with Arab Governments looking to reduce inequalities, with a focus on youth inclusion and economic empowerment. This will be achieved through building the capacity of national Governments to recognize and respond to the multiple and overlapping forms of inequality that their countries face.

Building on existing analysis and methodologies created by ESCWA, three publications and a toolkit will be developed that present three distinct and critical forms of inequality and how to identify the multidimensional forms of inequality that a country experiences. ESCWA will then support Governments in the six target countries to recognize the gravest forms of inequality within their countries and will support the establishment of National Working Groups on Equality that push for solutions to reduce inequalities. The project will offer peer exchanges between policymakers in the target countries, policymakers throughout the Arab region and global experts on equality that support policymakers to identify policy solutions that have worked at the global and regional level to reduce inequalities in general, and youth inclusion and empowerment more specifically. Following the peer exchanges and capacity building in the toolkit, ESCWA will support the National Working Groups on Equality to identify a form of inequality that they wish to address in country and to identify tailored policy solutions, which will be presented in a series of national policy briefs published by ESCWA and validated by Governments. Finally, ESCWA will support the National Working Groups to pursue one of the policy solutions by drafting a policy to reduce an identified form of national inequality. At the end of the project, it is expected that the target countries will mainstream inequality when designing policies and will be working alongside youth and the private sector to support greater youth employment.