The UAE celebrates
the World Population Day with the rest of the world, which is marked on the 11th
of July each year, and aims to focus attention on the urgent population issues
in the context of comprehensive developmental plans, in order to find the necessary
solutions to them. This year the focus is on –Investing in Youth-.
The United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) has sent a number of fundamental messages this year, in
which it stressed that the safe, healthy, and successful transit from
adolescence to adulthood is the right of each child, which cannot be realized
without the families and communities’ investment in this field, and providing
the opportunities to guarantee that teenagers and youth gradually develop their
knowledge, skills, and flexibility so that they can live a healthy and
productive life, in which they can achieve self-realization.
The UNFPA pointed
out that teenagers and young people receive major importance in the next developmental
plan in order to achieve the necessary development for them, their families,
their communities, and their countries, by securing their rights and investing
in their future through providing them with good education, convenient work,
effective life skills, and getting access to the services of sexual and
reproductive health, gender considerations, and enabling factors.
The UNFPA underscored
that investing in today’s youth through encouraging healthy habits and securing
educational opportunities and work, and receiving health services and social
security for all employees, is the best possible investment for improving the
lives of the coming generations, as the world contains 1.8 billion people between
the ages of 10 to 24 years, and they represent a quarter of the world’ population.
The UNFPA also
pointed out that there are 515 million people who are adolescents and young
adults aged between 15 and 24 years living on less than two dollars a day, and
millions of them face increasing deprivation in light of gender discrimination,
disability, and other forms of marginalization, and there are 69 million
teenagers in the age of secondary education who are still not enrolled in
school, and girls are less likely to attend school than boys, and that 250
million children of primary school age cannot read or write when they reach the
fourth grade. This is not just a waste of potential, but it's also a waste of
investment, and in the less developed countries, a quarter of young males aged
between 15 and 24 years, and one-third of young women of the same age group are
illiterate.
The UAE, after the high
indicators achieved in this area internally, is contributing in helping UN organizations
and funds to achieve these goals in the belief that development gains cannot be
maintained individually, and that the nations of the world should go forward
together in order to achieve the goals of sustainable development for the
people on earth. It was ranked first in the world as the most donor country for
development aid in 2013, which reached 86.95% of the total aid offered, which
includes humanitarian aid and charity, and the value of such aid reached 55.3%
of the total GDP of the State, to contribute in hundreds of special projects of
education, health and population, the elimination of disease, and the decline
of the gender gap, and the provision of employment opportunities and fresh
water and other requirements of development in different countries of the world.
Since women
represent 49.5% of the total number of citizens in the State, the UAE's leadership
has given special attention to the status of women and the requirements of
their advancement and empowerment, and has increased their participation in
various areas of society, which is emphasized by the legislation and the
constitution of the State in all areas, including employment, social security
and acquisitions, and ensuring equal opportunities in all fields and receiving
all the services of education, health, and social care in accordance with the
policies of UAE. The rise in the population in the UAE and the growing interest
in supporting the economy led to focus directly on education, which is
considered an essential element for the development of human capital, which in
turn is considered the third most important factor in the production process,
and the UAE was ranked first among Arab countries in the gender Gap Report
issued by the World Economic Forum in 2013, and the first globally in the index
of women respect within the global report to measure social development in
various countries around the world, after women have made up 43% of the labor
market in the State, 71% of the total students in governmental universities,
50.1% of the total students in private universities and institutes, and 62% of
the total students in master's and doctorate degrees in governmental
universities.
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