United Arab Emirates Importance to Youth Empowerment

The UAE attaches great importance to youth empowerment, as the youth sector is the most vital in all societies, given the hopes, broad ambitions, and unlimited capacities for giving and innovation, so there is a significant role that young people can play in promoting and upgrading their communities if they have the suitable climate. The UAE's good leadership recognizes the critical importance of the youth sector and its role in the development process. It has therefore provided every opportunity to support their participation in public life. The UAE's national youth plan seeks to promote UAE youth empowerment participation in its development process and its local and global agenda. This plan focuses on five main themes that keep pace with developments in the individual through the transition to adulthood, and critical effects from the age of 15 to 35 in the areas of learning for life and work, developing a productive working life, adopting a healthy and safe lifestyle, forming a family and exercising citizenship. With its overall objectives, this plan fully reflects a vision of how to provide opportunities to support and empower young people's participation.

H.E. Shamma Al Mazrouei, Minister of State for Youth Affairs, said on the occasion of her participation in the recent World Youth Forum in Egypt under the auspices of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that supporting our wise leadership. The Head of State, May God save him, and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Prime Minister, Ruler of Dubai, Patronage of God, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, May God save him, enabled the UAE to provide a successful model in empowering young people and genuinely involving them in the making of the future.

Launched by the Federal Youth Foundation, the UAE National Youth Empowerment Strategy reflects the UAE's keenness and rational leadership to provide all opportunities for the nation's youth, male and female, to actively participate in the UAE's overall development process, to create the UAE's future and achieve the UAE's 2071 centenary goals, consisting of a two-pronged approach aimed at setting overall strategic priorities for the youth sector and partnering with relevant government agencies and ministries to clarify and address the needs of young people, challenges and opportunities. The Federal Youth Foundation has developed a comprehensive set of tools and platforms to connect with and empower young people, raise their voices, and express their opinions inside and outside the UAE.

The continued efforts of our rational leadership in the empowerment of the youth sector have opened the door wide for our young men and women to contribute effectively to our development process, which has become the focus of the world's attention. There are many essential indicators in this context, which cannot be mentioned. For example, only to indicate that the future government formed in February 2016 included eight new ministers, five of them women. The average age of new ministers was 38. Today's youth are the men and leaders of tomorrow and the builders of the future. The UAE has made tremendous and sustained efforts to empower its youth, which has established an inspiring Arab model of caring for and supporting young people in all ways and providing them with every opportunity to activate their participation in building and promoting their society. This unique UAE youth empowerment model is undoubtedly an inspiring model for other Arab countries, which can benefit significantly from the UAE's experience in supporting and empowering the youth sector.