Syria Today | The Next Generation

The Next Generation

A new year brings with it new opportunities and a sense of unlimited potential. It’s only fitting then, that Syria Today begins 2009 by focusing on the country’s youth.

Around 30 percent of Syria’s population is aged between 15 and 30. They are, on average, the best educated, healthiest and most global-minded generation the country has ever produced. They are also diverse: in educational attainment, income, ambition and on a wide range of social and lifestyle attitudes and expectations. All of which makes forming an answer to the obvious question – what does it mean to be young in Syria? – no easy task.

Instead of trying to answer this question definitively, Syria Today has highlighted a number of issues and points of interest for Syria’s new generation. Unemployment is a key youth problem, with young people experiencing a rate of joblessness five times higher than their parents. At the same time, a number of organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, are working to address the problem and encourage individual entrepreneurship.

Syria’s youth are also far more globally connected than their parents could ever have imagined. A new generation is emerging that can’t remember life without satellite TV and the internet. As the steady comrise in Syrian bloggers shows, clearly it’s a generation which is not only listening to the world, but has something to say to it as well.

All of which makes contemporary Syria such an exciting place.