Young people, work and voice: what the evidence says about preventing violence and building trust in the Mediterranean region

1. Context and why it matters now

The Security Council has fixed the meaning of youth for the youth, peace and security agenda at persons aged 18 to 29, while noting that national and international definitions vary [1]. Resolution 2250 (2015) organised the agenda around participation, protection, prevention, partnerships, and disengagement and reintegration, and asked for a progress study [1]. Resolution 2419 (2018) noted that study and reaffirmed states' obligation to foster an enabling and safe environment for young people working on peace and security [2]. Resolution 2535 (2020) asked states to protect civic and political space, to support youth actors to carry out violence prevention work independently, to investigate threats and violence against them, and requested a biennial report [3]; the latest covers January 2022 to December 2023 [15].

The Progress Study, The Missing Peace, drew on consultations with 4,230 young people, including 281 focus groups in 44 countries, and 27 country-focused studies [6]. Its central message is that many young people are frustrated by governments and international actors that treat youth as a problem to be solved rather than as partners, and describe a loss of trust in systems of governance from which they feel excluded [6]. It estimated that 408 million young people aged 15 to 29 lived in settings affected by armed conflict or organised violence in 2016 [6].

The question matters now for three reasons. First, labour-market pressure is real: the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are the only two regions where the ILO projects the youth labour force to grow between 2023 and 2050 [4]. Second, conflict exposure is concentrated: in 2022 about 10 million young people in the Middle East and North Africa lived in close proximity to conflict, predominantly in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen [4]. Third, protest, migration and disengagement from formal politics have become visible signals of how young people judge their institutions, as the Kenyan protests of June 2024 and the emigration intentions in Arab Barometer's latest wave illustrate [12, 16].

This brief asks what the public evidence says about young people, work and voice as they relate to violence prevention and trust, and where a research-and-practice programme could add value. It covers the 13 countries in which TIPCS has offices. It is a desk review of public sources, and its limits are stated at the end.

2. What the evidence says

Employment programmes and violence: a thin evidence base

The most systematic review of the link between employment programmes and peace was prepared for the ILO, UNDP, the Peacebuilding Support Office and the World Bank Group. Of 432 programmes on its longlist, only 51 had an evaluation of any quality, none used a counterfactual meeting academic standards, and none of the shortlisted programmes explicitly tested whether employment programmes build peace [5]. The authors concluded that there is little empirical evidence to support the notion and little with which to condemn it [5, 17]. The Progress Study likewise states that there is little reliable evidence for a correlation, let alone causation, between youth unemployment and violent conflict, and that in Afghanistan and Somalia economic well-being does not lower support for armed groups [6].

Where employment programmes have been rigorously evaluated, labour-market effects are modest. A review of 113 impact evaluations of youth employment programmes found average effects that were small (Hedges' g of 0.05 for employment and 0.04 for earnings), better results in low- and middle-income countries, and better results from multi-service programmes, with design and delivery mattering more than intervention type [18]. A review of employment programmes in poor and fragile states found that capital appears to be a key constraint, that skills training rarely passes a cost-benefit test, and that successful programmes modestly reduce materially motivated crime and violence, while jobs and poverty may matter less for rioting, rebellion or terrorism [19].

Grievance, injustice and the conduct of state actors

UNDP's Journey to Extremism in Africa (2017) interviewed 718 people, including 495 who had voluntarily joined violent extremist groups, located mainly in Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan [7]. Its findings cut in two directions. Employment was the most frequently cited immediate need at the time of joining, and those studying or in non-vulnerable work took longer to join [7]. Yet 71 per cent of voluntary recruits pointed to government action, such as the killing or arrest of a family member or friend, as the incident that prompted them to join, and the report concluded that state security-actor conduct is a prominent accelerator of recruitment [7]. Disaffection with government was highest, by significant margins, among those recruited, and on average 78 per cent rated trust in the police, politicians and military as low [7].

The 2023 follow-up, covering nearly 2,200 interviews in eight countries, reported at a UN press conference that 25 per cent of recruits cited job opportunities as their primary reason for joining, that 40 per cent said they urgently needed a livelihood, and that of the 48 per cent of voluntary recruits who cited a triggering event, 71 per cent pointed to human rights abuses [20]. Both studies sample people who joined extremist groups, mostly in the Sahel, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa regions, and cannot be read as a measure of what moves young people in North Africa or the Levant [7, 21].

Mercy Corps' research in Afghanistan, Colombia and Somalia found that the principal drivers of political violence are rooted not in poverty but in experiences of injustice, including discrimination, corruption and abuse by security forces, and concluded that responses such as vocational training are unlikely, in isolation, to have much effect on stability [22]. The Progress Study reports community members in some countries feeling more fearful of government violations of human rights than of extremist groups, and notes that hard-fisted security approaches are counter-productive and not cost-effective [6].

Cash, capital and behavioural interventions

The strongest causal evidence comes from a handful of randomised trials. In Liberia, ex-fighters were offered agricultural training, capital inputs and counselling; those who accepted shifted hours away from illicit activity and showed less interest in mercenary work in a nearby war, most of all those who expected a future cash transfer, while training without capital had low impact [8]. In a separate Liberian trial of 999 high-risk men, eight weeks of therapy delivered by non-specialists, with or without $200 in cash, reduced antisocial behaviour ten years later, mostly among men at highest baseline risk [9]. In Chicago, Becoming a Man, which helps young people slow down and reconsider automatic reactions, was associated with reductions of roughly 45 to 50 per cent in violent-crime arrests across two trials, although the authors found no positive evidence that emotional intelligence, social skills, self-control or generic mentoring explained the result [10].

In Afghanistan, a randomised evaluation with 1,590 young people found that vocational training alone improved economic outcomes but had no effect on support for political violence, that a one-time cash transfer reduced support only in the short term, and that training combined with cash produced a 17 per cent reduction in willingness to support armed opposition group actions 6 to 9 months after the interventions ended [11]. Mercy Corps' account of the same programme concluded that joblessness was not the main driver of support for political violence and that improving young people's sense of respect in their community may be a leverage point [23]. Across these studies, status, continuing incentives and decision-making capacity matter at least as much as the job itself. All concern conflict-affected settings outside the 13 countries under review, and most concern men, so transferability is an open question.

Voice, participation and intergenerational relations

The Progress Study reports that young people consistently raised two related frustrations: exclusion from meaningful civic and political participation, and mistrust of patronage systems and corrupt governance; for many this has led to scepticism about democratic governance itself and withdrawal from formal politics into alternative avenues of participation [6]. It also warns against romanticising youth, against the co-optation of youth elites who may speak for the most marginalised, and against quotas that produce participants without credible links to broader youth peacebuilding [6]. Among 399 youth-led peacebuilding organisations that responded to its survey, half operated with less than $5,000 a year, and they reported difficulty assessing their impact for lack of capacity and funds, which is why the study called for more rigorous evidence beyond self-reported success [6].

The literature on intergenerational dialogue is mainly practice guidance rather than impact evaluation. The guidance note by the Folke Bernadotte Academy with the Swedish Dialogue Institute in the Middle East and North Africa draws on a participatory process involving more than 200 people but is not an evaluation, and this review did not locate controlled studies of dialogue outcomes [24]. Dialogue is best treated as a promising practice whose effects should be measured, not assumed.

3. The regional picture across the 13 countries

Work and exclusion from work

The ILO reports that global youth unemployment was 13.0 per cent in 2023 and that 20 per cent of young people worldwide were not in employment, education or training, two in three of them women [4, 25]. In the Middle East and North Africa youth unemployment was 24.4 per cent, the highest of any region and almost double the global average, with 22.3 per cent in North Africa and 28 per cent in the Arab States; the female youth rate was 35.4 per cent against 21.5 per cent for young men [4]. The youth employment-to-population ratio, at 18.5 per cent, was the lowest in the world, and 31.5 per cent of young people were not in employment, education or training, including 44.2 per cent of young women against 19.4 per cent of young men [4].

Table 1 sets out the ILO modelled estimates for each of the 13 countries. Modelled estimates allow comparison across countries but are not the same as national survey results, and for settings with disrupted statistical systems they should be read as indicative. For Tunisia, for example, reports citing the national statistical institute give a youth (15-24) unemployment rate of 38.4 per cent for the fourth quarter of 2025, with 37.0 per cent for young men and 41.3 per cent for young women, which is close to the modelled 2023 figure for a different year, although the reported gender pattern differs [26, 27].

Three features of Table 1 deserve comment. First, the spread is wide: modelled youth unemployment ranges from 15.2 per cent in Kenya to 49.9 per cent in Libya. Second, gender gaps differ sharply: in Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt the modelled rate for young women is roughly 1.5 to 3.1 times that for young men (a calculation from Table 1), while in Jordan the rates are close and in Lebanon and Tunisia the male rate is higher; the ILO attributes high NEET rates among young women in the region partly to the disproportionate share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities placed on them [4, 27]. Third, modelled NEET rates for Iraq (36.4 per cent), Mauritania (36.3 per cent) and Syria (34.4 per cent) exceed the regional average of 31.5 per cent, while Italy's is 12.7 per cent [4, 28]. For Palestine, the ILO brief reports youth unemployment of 59.3 per cent in Gaza before the war that began in October 2023, and a rise from 24.1 to 41.8 per cent in the West Bank; these are on a different basis from Table 1 and are not directly comparable [4].

Education-to-work gaps

The ILO finds that tertiary-educated young adults in the region are much less likely to be NEET, but that higher education does not reduce labour underutilisation in lower-middle and low-income countries, where two thirds of young adult workers hold qualifications that do not match their jobs [4]. It links this to growth in traditional services rather than higher-productivity sectors, and to informality [4]. Only 40.1 per cent of young people aged 15 to 29 in the Arab States felt their standard of living to be better than their parents', the lowest among regions, against 46.8 per cent in North Africa and a global 53.4 per cent [4].

Trust, voice and the wish to leave

Arab Barometer's Wave VIII (2023-24) covered seven countries in its migration report, of which five overlap with the TIPCS footprint. Young people are more likely than older adults to want to emigrate, and potential migrants tend to be young and college-educated; household income is not a major determinant, but views of the domestic economy are [12]. Among potential migrants, 90 per cent in Jordan and 89 per cent in Tunisia cite economic reasons, while in Lebanon security (27 per cent), political reasons (23 per cent) and corruption (24 per cent) also feature [12]. In Tunisia the share of adults who have considered emigrating rose from 22 per cent in 2011 to 46 per cent, the highest ever recorded there by Arab Barometer [12].

The wish to leave is not the same as trust, but it is informative. Arab Barometer's fifth wave found that young people in the region had little trust in governments widely seen as corrupt, while noting that youth attitudes on trust differed relatively little from those of older generations [29]. In Tunisia, the FES MENA Youth Study (second wave, 2021) surveyed 1,002 young people aged 16 to 30 and reported that 83 per cent had little or no interest in politics, that nearly half associated politics with corruption, and that fewer than one third were in paid employment [13]. An Arab Reform Initiative analysis notes that under-35s won 37 per cent of municipal council seats in 2018 through mandatory youth quotas, but that most young councillors were co-opted onto lists led by older people [30]. This pattern of quota-driven entry without influence is consistent with the Progress Study's caution about quotas [6, 30].

In Kenya, Afrobarometer's survey of April and May 2024 found trust in the president at 45 per cent, down from 72 per cent in 2014, in parliament at 44 per cent, and in the police and the electoral commission at 36 per cent each; trust rises with age, and the dispatch gives no separate youth figure [14]. In June 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that security forces shot at crowds of protesters, mostly aged 18 to 35 and organised largely through social media, and documented at least 30 deaths on 25 June; other sources gave lower counts, and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights announced an inquiry [16]. These events are cited as documented facts about youth civic action and state response, without any view on the policy dispute that triggered them.

Where comparable data are missing

No comparable survey evidence on youth trust, political participation or emigration intentions was identified for Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Türkiye, Iraq or Italy in the sources opened for this review; table entries are marked n/a rather than estimated. The Anna Lindh Foundation's 2021 survey, which interviewed 13,264 people in eight European and five southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania and Morocco), found that 36 per cent in the latter group named social media as their most trusted source in its media questions, rising to 41 per cent among those aged 15 to 29 against 33 per cent among those over 30 [31]. These are perceptions, not outcomes.

4. Analysis: drivers, mechanisms and openings

Read together, the sources suggest four mechanisms through which work, voice and violence prevention are linked, each with a different strength of evidence.

1. Status and dignity. Mercy Corps' Afghanistan work and the Progress Study point to respect, recognition and meaningful work, rather than income alone; employment interventions have often offered unskilled, casual work with little attention to aspirations and dignity [6, 11]. The evidence is suggestive and comes from conflict-affected settings.
2. Justice and the conduct of state actors. UNDP's finding on government action as a tipping point, Mercy Corps' finding on injustice and the Progress Study's account of repression as a motivator converge [6, 7, 22]. This is the best supported mechanism in the extremism literature, but the studies sample recruits and cannot establish how common the pathway is.
3. Voice and legitimacy. Young people withdraw from formal politics when participation is tokenistic or controlled; the Progress Study advises accountable institutional mechanisms, especially in justice, security and education [6]. Evidence of effect on violence is indirect.
4. Material opportunity and informality. Employment matters for well-being and is a frequent immediate need in the UNDP data [7, 20], but evidence that programmes meet it cheaply and at scale is modest [18, 19], and the ILO's analysis of mismatch and informality suggests the quantity of jobs is only part of the problem [4].

Counter-evidence and complications

Several findings complicate any single story. The Becoming a Man and Liberian therapy results show that violence can be reduced without changing labour-market conditions [9, 10], which suggests that decision-making and self-regulation are a separate pathway. As reported at the 2023 press conference, the share of voluntary recruits citing jobs rose by 92 per cent from the 2017 study while the share citing religion, at 17 per cent, was 57 per cent lower, so the weight of drivers shifts over time and place [20]. The Progress Study notes that the vast majority of young people are not involved in violence and that young people are diverse and divided [6]. A programme that treats youth as a risk category risks reproducing the stigma the study criticises.

Digital and civic spaces

Young people increasingly use social media to exercise political agency, demand accountability and build networks, although the same spaces may be used for criminal activity or hate speech, and the digital divide limits access [6]. A UNDP survey of young activists in Europe and Central Asia, outside the region of focus and cited only as an indicative parallel, found that about 70 per cent said online activism raises visibility, about 63 per cent felt it does not reach all young people, and internet restrictions and online harassment were among the biggest barriers [32]. Resolution 2535 (2020) asks states to protect civic and political space and to condemn hate speech and incitement to violence, which frames digital safety as a protection issue and not only a skills issue [3].

Openings for cooperation

There are institutional openings. The EU Youth Action Plan in EU external action 2022-2027 rests on three pillars, engage, empower and connect, supports the youth, peace and security agenda, commits to youth consultations in programming and youth focal points in EU delegations, and refers to Young Mediterranean Voices, Erasmus+ support in the Southern Mediterranean and exploration of Youth Guarantee schemes in North Africa [33]. The UN's record is more modest: its Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs reports that only four member states (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Finland, Nigeria and the Philippines) have national action plans on youth, peace and security, none of them among the 13 countries reviewed here, and that the Peacebuilding Fund's Youth Promotion Initiative has invested more than $105 million in 83 youth projects since 2016 [34].

5. What the evidence supports and what it does not

Table 3 separates claims that the cited sources support from claims they support only in part or not at all. The classification is this brief's judgement, based on the strength of the study designs described above.

6. Implications for policy and practice

The following implications follow from the evidence above. They are directed at kinds of actors and are not tied to any one government.

• Governments and public authorities: treat protection of civic and political space for young people as a precondition for youth programmes, in line with resolution 2535, including investigating threats against young people active on peace and security and avoiding the labelling of peaceful dissent as extremism [3, 6]. Publish disaggregated youth labour-market data to improve on modelled estimates [4].
• Donors: separate employment objectives from violence-prevention objectives in programme design, and fund evaluations with credible counterfactuals that measure violence, trust and perceived justice directly, as the ILO-commissioned review recommended [11, 17]. Where employment programmes are funded, combine capital or continuing incentives with attention to status and dignity [8, 11, 19].
• Municipalities and universities: create standing, accountable channels through which young people can raise concerns about services, policing and education, and monitor whether quotas or youth councils translate into influence over budgets and decisions [6, 30].
• Civil society and youth-led organisations: invest in evaluation capacity and seek core funding [6]. Guard against co-optation of youth elites by ensuring fair selection that reaches marginalised young people, including young women, who are the most excluded from work in the region [4, 6].
• Researchers: prioritise studies in the region, including on women and on young people outside education and work, and report null and adverse results; most causal evidence on violence reduction comes from men in Liberia, Chicago and Afghanistan [8, 10, 11].
• EU and Euro-Mediterranean programmes: use the monitoring framework promised in the Youth Action Plan to track whether participation commitments reach southern Mediterranean partners and whether protection accompanies participation [3, 33].

7. What TIPCS proposes

Research questions

1. How do young people aged 18 to 29, disaggregated by sex and by education and work status, define dignity, justice and trust in their own words, and how do these definitions compare with the indicators used in major surveys?
2. Which local institutions, such as municipalities, universities, employment offices and police, do young people trust or distrust, and what do they say would change that?
3. Does structured dialogue between young people and local decision-makers, or between generations, change measured trust, perceived procedural justice and willingness to participate, relative to comparison groups?
4. What safe channels for reporting harassment, exploitation or threats do young people use or avoid, and why?

Design and methods

• Youth-led participatory research. TIPCS would train and pay young co-researchers, with attention to gender balance and to young people outside education and work, to design questions, collect data and interpret findings, drawing on the participatory method of the Progress Study [6].
• Comparable measurement. A short survey module would reuse established Arab Barometer and Afrobarometer items on trust and emigration intentions where licensing allows, for comparison with published series [12, 14], and would add items on perceived fairness and dignity.
• Campus and municipal dialogue. Facilitated dialogues in universities and municipalities, with comparison sites or a stepped introduction where practical, to test the effect on trust and participation; intergenerational formats would draw on existing guidance and be evaluated [24].
• Safe reporting channels. A confidential channel, linked to referral services and to TIPCS' whistleblowing and complaints policy, for participants to report harassment, exploitation or safety concerns arising from participation. It would not be a platform for political denunciation.
• Skills. Short courses in research methods, dialogue facilitation, digital safety and data protection, with links to employers and training providers tested as an optional component, so that skills are not presented as a stand-alone solution [11, 19].
• Phasing. A first phase in a small number of the 13 countries, selected on safety, data access and the presence of willing local partners, with findings published openly, and with a decision point before any expansion.

Indicators

Indicators would be agreed with young co-researchers and an advisory group, and registered before data collection. Candidate indicators include: self-reported trust in named local institutions; perceived procedural fairness in dealings with those institutions; sense of dignity and respect in the community, reflecting the status mechanism in the Afghan findings [11]; participation in local decision-making, beyond attendance; use of and confidence in the reporting channel; and experiences of intimidation. The design would not include radicalisation scores or risk profiles of individuals, since the Progress Study shows how such labelling can stigmatise young people [6]. Employment and NEET status would be recorded as context, using ILO definitions [4].

Ethics, safeguarding and do-no-harm

The design would operate under TIPCS' seven policies in force: code of conduct, safeguarding and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, anti-fraud and anti-corruption, conflict of interest, whistleblowing and complaints, sanctions and due diligence, and research ethics and editorial independence. The first phase would be limited to adults aged 18 and over, in line with resolution 2250 [1]; work with younger people would need guardian consent and additional protection. Commitments would include: informed and revocable consent; a country-level risk assessment before any activity, with the option to stop; no collection of political affiliation or other sensitive data unless essential and protected; anonymised or aggregated reporting; secure data storage; avoiding visibility that could expose young people to retaliation, given resolution 2535's concern about threats against youth peace actors [3]; and publication of findings even when null or adverse.

Partnership model and use of results

TIPCS would seek partnerships with universities, municipalities, youth-led organisations and national statistical offices on agreed data-sharing and publication terms, and would convene an advisory group in which young people form the majority. Results would be offered to national and local institutions, to EU and UN youth, peace and security processes and to researchers, with open instruments so that findings can be replicated [3, 33]. TIPCS publishes its funding, and no funder would have editorial control over findings.

8. Risks, limitations and what we do not know

• Evidence transfer. The strongest causal studies are from Liberia, Chicago and Afghanistan and may not transfer to the countries reviewed [8, 10, 11].
• Sampling. The UNDP studies interview people who joined extremist groups, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, so their pathways may not be typical [7, 20].
• Data quality. ILO modelled estimates differ from national surveys, and the Palestinian series ends before the 2023 war [4, 27].
• Coverage. Youth-specific trust and participation data were identified only for Tunisia, and emigration intentions only for five of the 13 countries; for Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Türkiye, Iraq and Italy neither was found in the sources opened [12, 13].
• Participation risks. Young people who take part in research or dialogue may face retaliation or stigma, particularly where civic space is restricted, which is why the proposal makes country-level go or no-go decisions part of its design [3, 6].
• Programme risks. Dialogue not linked to changes in institutional behaviour may reinforce cynicism, quotas can bring in co-opted representatives, and cash transfers may have delayed adverse effects [6, 11, 30].
• Unknowns. This review did not locate controlled evidence on intergenerational dialogue, on safe reporting channels for young people, or on the violence effects of youth employment programmes in any of the 13 countries.

9. Conclusion

The public evidence supports concern about the exclusion of young people from work and decision-making in much of the region, especially young women, and supports the Progress Study's view that young people are partners for peace rather than a problem to be solved [6]. It does not support the shortcut that employment alone prevents violence. Justice, dignity and voice recur in the better studies, as do combined and behavioural approaches. The gaps matter as much as the findings: comparable data for several countries are missing, controlled evidence on dialogue and reporting channels is thin, and region-specific evidence on what reduces violence is close to absent. A youth-led, safeguarded and transparent programme willing to publish null results could add to that evidence, and TIPCS proposes to design one on those terms.

Method and limits of this brief

This brief is a desk review of public sources opened and read in October 2026; it involved no primary fieldwork, interviews or new data collection. Country figures are ILO modelled estimates published by the World Bank, which differ from national survey results and may be revised. Several figures are taken from summaries rather than full reports: the 2023 UNDP findings from a United Nations press-conference summary, the Tunisian national statistics from a news-agency report citing the national statistical institute, and the Kenyan protest figures from a human rights organisation, so they should be checked against primary releases before reuse. The review did not systematically search all academic databases; the studies cited were selected for relevance and quality of design and may omit relevant work, including literature in Arabic and French. The classification in Table 3 is a judgement of the author. Comparable youth survey data were not identified for several of the 13 countries, and n/a entries indicate absence of verified data, not absence of the phenomenon. Evidence from outside the region is cited as evidence about mechanisms, not as a prediction of what would happen in any of the countries covered.

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How to cite

Tunisian Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (TIPCS) (2026). Young people, work and voice: what the evidence says about preventing violence and building trust in the Mediterranean region. Monastir: TIPCS. www.tipcs.org/publications/youth-work-voice-prevention